Is salt needed to fight Ick?

[matteo]

Hello,

So I went over to check one of my tanks and noticed my school of 9 Cardinal Tetras were all hanging out at the front corner of the tank, and not moving very much. I noticed a decent peppering of white spots on all of them so I'm pretty sure that they have the Ick. I do not see any signs of the Ick on any fish other than the Cardinal Tetras and one Swordtail.

In this tank is also a school of Corries which I think are scale-less fish, and from what I have read they can get irritated from the salt (?). I have raised the temp from 80 to 82 and will bring it up to 86, 2 degrees a day.

Stocking for the tank is:

? Japonica shrimp
6 Zebra nerites
2 Rubbernose plecos
6 Panda cory cats
5 Koi Swordtails
9 Cardinal Tetra
4 Otto cats
8 (juvie) Angelfish

Should I add salt with the Corries in there? If so please recommend a dosage as I have never added salt to my aquariums before.

Thanks for any advice, oh wise AC :bowing:

 

[mjordan29]

do half as much as the recomended dosing of salt. i think its 1 tbs per 5 or 10g's. imo salt is needed along with the temp increase. also increase you arriration as you dont want your lil corries suffocating from the lack of oxygen form the increased heat + the new salt they have never seen before.

thats what i would do. i like salt for fixing disease! i do NOT like chemicals at all.

just watch it. if it starts looking bad just do some more water changes... ohh yeah almonst forgot. do water changes like every other day. it will help.

 

[Lupin]

A teaspoon per gallon should be fine. Add the second set in the next 12 hours. Don't forget that you must dissolve the salt thoroughly for your catfishes' sake. Dissolution and aeration are your fish's key to survival.

 

[GoldLenny]

Most fish can acclimate and tolerate the levels of salt required to help kill Ich. For sensitive fish and scaleless fish, you just have to slowly raise the salinity level over a longer period of time. There have been MANY fisheries studies using salt up to 0.3% to 0.5% (3 teaspoons per gallon to 5 teaspoons per gallon) on farm raised catfish and the catfish were left in the salty water solution for 45 days with a HIGH success rate against Ich. Any other medications besides salt are just as rough on the fish as salt.

In your case, using salt and heat and added aeration or surface agitation should work. You want to slowly raise your water temperature up to 83F and then to 85F, no more than 1-2F per day... while doing the below also. The heat speeds up the life cycle of Ich and the salt will kill them when they are in their free-swimming stage.

Do proper filter maintenance (so you clean the filters while keeping the majority of your nitrifying bacteria alive) and vacuum your gravel as best you can to remove excess detritus from the ecology. Vacuuming the gravel will also suck up some of the Ich that may be in the gravel during that part of their life cycle.

Start off with a 0.1% salt solution and add it into the tank one quarter at a time over a couple of hours. This means adding one teaspoon of salt per gallon of your tank and add this salt to a gallon jug or bucket of water, mixing it thoroughly until all the salt is dissolved. Then you can slowly pour 1/4er of this solution into your tank, keeping the salty water away from your filter intakes and away from fish. Sometimes, I will slowly pour meds into the outflowing water from my filters and let that slowly spread it out through the tank. If you add 1/4er of this solution every hour, it will take you four hours to raise the salt level up to 0.1% level. Keep an eye on the fish and if any of them show excess stress related to the salt, you can spread this out over a longer period of time. Remember to keep your filters running and add air stones or lower the water level a little (or raise the HOB filters a little) to increase surface agitation to increase the O2 levels in the water.

After 24 hours, repeat the above 0.1% salt solution and that will bring it up to 0.2%.

After 24 hours, if the fish are tolerating 0.2%, then you can repeat and bring it up to 0.3%.

That should be sufficient to cure your tank of Ich.

Here's a couple of articles with LOTS more info.

http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/health/ich.shtml

http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/health/salt.shtml

 

[Smok3o3]

Ive used salt to get ick out of the tank and turn the temp up two very important things to fight ick. Good luck

 

[matteo]

Thanks for all the advice everyone. Since raising the temp 2 degrees the Ick now looks really bad so things look like theyre going the right direction.

How pervasive is Ick? I use the same bucket / python for this tank that I use for two smaller tanks (10g/15g). Should I just assume the Ick has spread to the other tanks? I do not move livestock between these aquariums and I do not see any signs of the Ick in the smaller tanks.

Thanks again.

 

[GoldLenny]

Possibly... but if you use the Python to refill, it's not as likely since you will be running tap water back through the hose to refill the tank taht you just siphoned/vacuumed so that tap water should flush most stuff back into the same tank that it came from. Of course, if you have the siphon tube in the water of the tank and you pull it out and don't rinse it off, there could be an Ich or two in the drops of water on the siphon tube that gets transferred to the next tank.

Keep a lookout for the tell-tale sign of Ich in the other tanks... the fish look like they've been sprinkled with sugar or salt granules. If you don't see any, you should be OK but be more diligent right now since you know your one tank has Ich. Don't even use the Python on that tank right now.

In the future, once the Ich tank is cured, rinse the siphon tube under the tap water really good before putting it into the next tank. It won't be completely fool-proof in a possible transfer as only sterilizing it or using separate Pythons for each tank would do that... but rinsing any water drops from one tank, off the Python, should give you a 90% assurance of not transferring anything.

Why do you use buckets if you have a Python?

 

[matteo]

Alright great, I always blast some hot water through the Python before moving from one tank to another. I'll keep a close eye out all the same.

I'll use a bucket instead of the Python for small (10%) water changes. Faster for me to use a 3' syphon and a bucket than hook up the 25' python to the tap. Plus I really dont like letting the tap run to drain the tank when gravity is free.

I always rinse python/bucket in hot water once finished with each tank. I mainly keep snakes so its just part of the routine to clean tools before moving from one enclosure (or fish tank in this case) to another.

Thanks again for your info.

 

[KarlTh]

thats what i would do. i like salt for fixing disease! i do NOT like chemicals at all.

Tough. Salt is NaCl - a chemical.

 

[matteo]

Tough. Salt is NaCl - a chemical.

In case you werent being pedantic, I think the poster was referring to retail Ick 'cures'.