PLEASE HELP.... Ich?

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Prez

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Feb 2, 2005
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Can someone tell me if during the free swimming stage you can actually see the ich? We have awoke to a lot (possibly 100's) of these very very small white (almost sperm looking) "dots" that are scurrying around in the tank.

The tank is established and the 2 fish have been in the tank for awhile now (betta = 4 months ... gold nugget pleco= 2 months) Water levels are fine.

Please, someone tell me this is not ich. I have done so much searching on the web this morning for pictures of ich during the free swimming stage and can't find a single one.
 
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I don't believe you can see the free swimming tomites - i thiink they are microscopic
i could be wrong though - orion girl would know
 
Yes you can see the tomites in the tank at certain stages, as far as I know. But as LMB said OrionGirl is the person who will know for sure.

I would wait to treat it till she lets you know.
 
midiamin said:
Definitely not Ich. Ich is a type of fungus. It does not swim around in the tank.
Click to expand...

It does, but it's too small to see with the naked eye. Ich is not a fungus; it is a tiny animal - a protozoon.
 
The only stage where ich is really visible is while it is on the fish, When it Drops from the fish, it is still fairly large for a protozoan, but it would be next to impossible to see. The freeswimmers are microscopic, and Farimir is correct, it is a protazoan parasite not a fungus. Lastly, if your fish have not shown any signs of ich, and you haven't added anything new, you couldn't possibly have enough freswimmers to be noticeable even if they weren't microscopic. Do you feed Daphnia?
dave
 
Thank you all for the replies.

Here's what's going on so far. After coming home from work I decided I would just change some of the water (I just did a change about 1 1/2 weeks ago) and clean the gravel. Well, to my amazement there were also a TON of these very small "worm" looking - more like 1/4" strands of fine white hairs that move!!! -- that were sucked up when I was cleaning/changing the water. They were coming out everywhere I placed the vacumn. The betta was eating them too...lol.

At first I freaked and then panicked. I continued to do a water change and then decided I would remove all the ornaments from tank. I removed the betta and placed him into a "carry" tank with water from the current tank (I did this because the current gets a bit much for him when there are no ornaments to break it up). I left the drift wood with the gold nuggent pleco in the tank. I thought maybe if I just replaced the water after my water change and then used the electric gravel vacumn with a mod to the discharge bag (add a piece of paper towel for extra filtering) I could suck up all those worms. What a lost cause that was. So I decided to remove all the gravel and left just the drift wood with the pleco in the tank.

I went to the LFS and spoke with the owner -- I have been going to him for awhile now -- and he said that the worms are probably the cause of too many organics left in the tank. I agreed because we have not been keeping up on removing all the excess food from the alge discs I have been throwing into the tank every other night. He said that the white things may also be from that or possibly some left over Daphnia (thanks daveedka) that could have been on the plants he sold me quite awhile back ---- I had removed the floating plants during the water change the 1 1/2 weeks ago.

Well, to make this long story ---- even longer!!! (and more boring)hehehehehehehehehe..............

I purchased some new gravel, cleaned the ornaments, placed the gravel in the tank and then the betta and all seems fine today. The small white things are still in the tank -- not as much -- but they don't seem to be causing any harm. I'm still not quite certain of what they are, they do not look like Daphnia as the LFS guy showed me some in one of his tanks. These things are REAL small and stay mostly on the walls of the tank. I so wish I could get a picture to come out of them.



Thank you all for your help =) !!!
 
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