Treatment: Salt (sodium chloride or NaCl) is a much gentler medication than Ich medications commonly sold in pet stores. Some commercial parasite medications can push a sick fish over the edge. Salt will not harm your filter bacteria, it’s cheap and will not harm humans coming into contact with it; however, not all fish tolerate salt. We recommend it only for cold water fish like Goldfish and Koi. Tropical fish are best treated with a malachite/formalin combination like Rid Ich or Quick Cure. Salt may also kill some plants, so you will need to remove any live plants into another container and disinfect them (Potassium Permanginate works well for disinfecting plants). The salt must be fully dissolved in tank water before adding it to the tank. Most any salt will work fine. Rock salt or pickling salt work great and are cheap. Avoid using salt that contains yellow prussiate of soda
It is very easy to treat Ich with salt. You’ll need a concentration of 0.3% salt (3 teaspoons per gallon) to eradicate the Ich. To reach 0.3% salt you would add 1 teaspoon of salt per gallon of water to your tank 3 times, each 12 hours apart. Predissolve the salt in tank water and then add slowly to a high water flow area.
It is important to keep track of the salt going into your tank because salt does not evaporate and is not removed with activated carbon. It is removed only with water changes. To keep the salt at the desired level, when you do a partial water change, you must salt the new water to the same concentration as the tank water. For example, if you remove 10 gallons of water you will need to add 30 teaspoons of salt to the change water to keep the tank at 0.3%.
While treating Ich, you will need to vacuum the entire bottom of the tank each day to remove any cysts that have fallen off. This will reduce the amount of tomites swimming in the tank and will help to clear the Ich faster. Heating the tank to 78-80*F will speed up the Ich life cycle and boost the fish’s immune system response. At that temperature Ich has a life cycle of 3-5 days. Typically, your fish will look like it is getting better then another wave of spots will appear. Each cycle is usually worse than the one before. But if you keep up the water changes and salt ich will clear within a week. Maintain salt at 0.3% for 7 days after the last cyst drops off the fish. This will ensure that the Ich is indeed gone. If your tank temperature is lower, the life cycle can extend into weeks so you will need to adjust your temperature or your treatment regime accordingly.
Be sure to keep your water quality excellent during this time. Ich will stress your fish so you need to ensure optimum water quality. As trophonts leave the host, they leave behind small exit wounds. That coupled with the stress suffered by the fish can give bacteria and fungi an unfair advantage, so it is important to watch out for any signs of secondary infection shortly after a bad case of ich.
