Ick treatment ?

abovethestorm

abovethestorm

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Aug 20, 2008
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First of all I wasnt going to post on it because I know so many people do that its annoying but I cant help myself, so im sorry ahead of time. lol


I started adding a salt mixture of 2tsps per gallon in wednesday slowly. I added it over the course of two days finishing up last night. As of late last night and this morning my oscars seem to be a bit more agressive with each other then normally. Not to the point where its a problem but its something I noticed. Could it be their reaction to the salt? The one with the the extremly calm temperment actually got after the larger one for a minute.


Also my tank temp is normally 84 in the summer without any heater because of the room its in. Should I go ahead and crank up the temperature or just let things run their course? I have read various things on what to keep the temp on. I have read as high as 90 and also as low as 84? If I need to crank it up I am going to be a digital temp thing that I saw and hook them up with some bubbles which they will be happy to play in.



Anyway main question is have you ever seen the salinity cause a change in temperment?

Also on a side note does anyone have a good sugestion (reading material or flat out what you do) for a QT routine. I obviously need one because mine didnt work. I thought hmm if I QT the feeders before hand they should be fine.. not so. Now I am working on raising my own feeders but I would still like a good QT routine in general for everyone. Also before anyone asks, my Oscars only get feeders maybe once every two weeks or so, the rest of the time they are on pellets and veggies.
 
...okay...
 
Yes, the irritaion of the salt on their slime coat could cause grumpiness.
No, you don't have to add a heater, you're fine at 84 degrees. Continue the salt for the full 10-14 days. I'd be tempted to stretch it out to the 14 th day just to be safe.
Don't feed feeders, ever. There's diseases you've not even heard of that can affect them and kill your Oscars. Feeders are NOT good nutrition anyway. Stick to pellets, bugs, earthworms, shrimp, peas, etc.
 
ksane said:
Yes, the irritaion of the salt on their slime coat could cause grumpiness.
No, you don't have to add a heater, you're fine at 84 degrees. Continue the salt for the full 10-14 days. I'd be tempted to stretch it out to the 14 th day just to be safe.
Click to expand...

So should I add a little extra stress coat to help them along?
 
ksane said:
Don't feed feeders, ever. There's diseases you've not even heard of that can affect them and kill your Oscars. Feeders are NOT good nutrition anyway. Stick to pellets, bugs, earthworms, shrimp, peas, etc.
Click to expand...


the safe way to feed feeders is to raise them yourself and to use feeders that do not have a high thiamine (if i recall correctly) level in them. but as the OP said, they only feed feeders once in a while, and mentioned that they are or are going to breed and raise their own feeders, so i would not be concerned here.
 
Yep I am working on getting my livebearers going so I can have my own feeders that I know dont carry STD's lol. I like to give them to my Oscars every so often but mainly they have their pellets, sticks, frozen foods, bait worms, veggies and the occasional june bug that annoys me too much. I have yet to try shrimp. I might at some point soon.

What I was doing is attempting to QT a group of rosey reds for around a month and feeding them brine shrimp and blood worms ect. Then when they apeared to be healthy I would feed them. Now I am not sure if the oscars caught the Ich from them or if it was from my new pleco who I didnt have a QT tank large enough for a few weeks ago. The pleco should have been alright since it came from someone I know fairly well who takes care of their fish, but you never know. Thats why I was asking about a QT routine. I'd like to get a sure fire method to make sure new fish are healthy. Whew that was long winded. lol
 
i was in the midst of editing my post and adding stuff on qt when my kidlett commanded my attention with a large crash from the kitchen. time to take the cookie sheets outta the cupboard i let her play in, me thinks? lol.

the minimum time recommended for qt is 4 weeks, but longer is better. some people are proactive with certain medications to eliminate parasites n such even if there are no symptoms, but IMO that's overkill.

there are those that say ich is always present in a tank and those that say it is not. i am not going to voice my opinion on this because it could derail the thread.

what have your water parameters been like lately? has the behaviour of the oscars or the pleco given you concern that either is stressed? have any of your fish been ill with something else lately? from what i've seen and read and heard, ich is stress related, to some degree, and some fish are more susceptible to it than others. it is possible the pleco brought it in, and there were just no symptoms until a fish got stressed enough for the ich to rear it's ugly lil head.

i would personally bump the heat up just a little, maybe 86, i think that would speed up the ich cycle a little and make it all over that much sooner for them.

as a treat, once in a while i give my oscar pieces of cocktail shrimp (tail removed!), you know, the kind you get frozen in a ring at the grocery store. he loves them!
 
BFM, I read about this a while back while I was researching HITHLLE. It is thiaminase, which is an enzyme that breaks down thiamine into two molecular parts. If fish eat other fish that contain high levels of this over a period of time then this enzyme builds up and causes them to develp a thiamin (B1 vitamin) deficiency.

Gold fish and Rosy Reds are some of the fish at the top of the list containing thiaminase. Other fish that even humans eat contain it too, but the cooking process decomposes the thiaminase.

I'm pretty sure guppies don't contain high levels of that, but you could do more research.

I suppose that if you supplemented your fish with vitamin B1 or foods rich in B1 then you could prevent B1 deficiency in your fish while feeding goldfish or rosie reds but I'd do other than live feeders, myself, if I had one of the big boys.

Thiamine deficiency was one of the things listed as a probable cause of HITHLLE (Hole-In-The-Head-Lateral-Line-Erosion) in Oscars and other fish prone to that. Other factors were postulated as well, it seems no one is positive of the exact cause, but nutrition, nitrates, thiamin deficiency were in the article I read.

Didn't mean to get off on a side bar; don't worry your guys will do well with the salt heat method. I've done it and most of the snails went through it fine. I did move plants to a 10 gallon, though.
 
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