oh no fish with ick

WestideNi99a

Banned
Aug 12, 2006
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my fish has ick what should i do get some treatmen cause i already boosted the temp to like 84 and added Aquariun salt
 
and how much salt?
 
I wasn't going to post if the info in the article said what needed to be said but, I clicked on it and a message came up saying it wasn't found.....sooooo....here's what you should do for ich:

Stay away from meds. You don't need them. Add one tablespoon of aquarium salt per five gallons of tank water and keep the temp where you have it (I think you said it was at 84F). Keep your tank at that salt level for about 1 week and the ich will be gone. Here's why:

Ich is an internal parasite of fish. It lives just under the surface of the skin and in the gill tissue. It twists and turns under the skin as it feeds and grows, causing those white lesions to form on the skin. When it is big enough, and mature enough, it breaks free and attaches itself to any surface it can find. Once it's attached it forms a capsule (cyst) and divides, creating more parasites which then break out, swim around, and infest more fish.

When you raise the temperature of the water you speed up the life cycle of the parasite causing it to leave the fish and produce free-swimmers more quickly. The salt in the water kills the free swimming parasites, preventing them from infecting more fish. In about a week, all of the adult parasites will have dropped off the fish and the free-swimmers will have been killed. At this point, your tank will be ich-free.

Don't worry about having salt in the tank for more than a week. It will not hurt your fish. Just do your regular water changes and, eventually, you'll get rid of the salt. Having some level of salt in your tank for an extended period of time will actually help your fish recover and safeguard your tank from any ich parasites that may have survived the initial treatment. The free-swimmers are actually pretty intolerant of some relatively low salt levels so, even when diluting the salt in your tank through water changes, you're still protecting your fish from ich.

Good luck.
 
You need to add more salt then that...It is suppose to be:

A) Add 1 teaspoon per gallon of water..
B) 12 hours later, add another 1 teaspoon per gallon of water
C) 12 hours later it is another 1 teaspoon per gallon of water

That should come out to 3 teaspoons per gallon of water in your tank..

Please note a teapoon equals to 5 ml for conversion

Raise temperature also..I usually do it around 86 degrees..Ich should be gone in 5 days or less depending on the outbreak.
 
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Really? More salt? What actually worked for me was following the directions on the box of aquarium salt that I bought which said to use 1 tablespoon per 5 gallons. My outbreak of ich was cleared in under a week and never came back. I also just let my regular water change schedule dilute the salt out over time. Like I said in my original post, the free swimming tomites are intolerant of relatively low salt concentrations. You shouldn't have to overdose your tank to get rid of ich. I used 10 tablespoons of aquarium salt in my 55...that's it. I used 10 because I know I don't have 55 gallons of actual water volume in there, due to the gravel and rocks in my tank. I also didn't add the salt over such a long period of time. I put the salt in an empty 2 liter soda bottle, filled it with tank water from one of the filter tubes, and shook it up, making sure all of the salt crystals dissolved. I then added half the bottle to the tank, waited a few hours, then added the rest. No fish deaths and, a few days later, no ich. Have you ever tried dosing at lower salt levels? You might be adding much more than you need.
 
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