Last Ich Spot Gone

[emmaS]

Hi. I went through 5-6 days of dealing w/ ich. The good news is the last white spots have disappeared. Yeah! But now I'm not sure what to do.

Yesterday I did a water change vacuuming up the gravel. I replaced the salt I had taken out with salt so the tank has the same amount of salt as previous. I did lower the temps from 84-85 to 82-83.

My questions are:

1. How long do I continue the ich treatment now that the white is all gone?

2. Do I continue the ich treatment with the temp in the 80s or can I lower back to 78?

3. I left the same amount of salt as recommended (2 tsp per gallon). Should I be lessening the amount of salt now?

Thanks!

 

[YoFishboy]

Congrats! If the fish are not showing any substantial stress from the successful treatment you are using, then I would continue for a week to ten days, to play it safe.....why don't you post a little summary of what you did....nothing wrong with repeating good information!

 

[quadpants]

I agree, 10-14 days with heat (and salt if your fish are ok with it) after seeing the last white spot is important, because there are dormant stages after the trophont (white spot) stage. If you reduce heat and change out all the water now, you probably won't be rid of it for good.

http://aquafacts.net/wiki/index.php/Ich

 

[emmaS]

Okay, thanks for the info. Here's the saga:

At first I was tempted to buy ich meds but I discovered the ich at 2am and couldn't go to store--so I came here, read about salt. I used regular table salt (without iodine) because that's what I had.

I mixed 40 tsps (for 20 gallon) in one gallon pitcher and slowly poured in it in 3 batches. I bumped up the temps on the heater to 84 but it took about 2 days to get it up to 84-86 range. Normally I keep it 76. I lost a black fin tetra who was the only one who had ich at the time. The next day white spots developed on all my neons and the pleco.

I noticed one neon gasping at the surface so I took out several gallons of water to create a lot of splash. I'd also leave the hood open now and then.

It took about 3 days before I saw a lot of improvement. I did not do a water change previous or during. I just did a 30% one after the last white spots were gone.

Now I'll continue the salt and heat and hope I won't have to deal with this parasite again.