Plec's and Salt

CharlieV

CharlieV

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Feb 16, 2005
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Hi All,

One of my Angels in 100g (P.Scalarae) has Ick. I want to use the salt and heat method. I added a small amount of salt to test and my L102 (snowball) is showing stress colouration
Water is spot on with no polutants.

Are Plecs effected by salt?
If so what would be the next best way of treating my Angel?
No QT tank, No Antibiotics (i live in UK), preferably no chemicals at all.

TIA
Chaz
 
Some species of pleco's are hit hard by salt. If yours is already showing stress, I'd say he's one of them. Copper based meds also take a serious toll on plecos. Heat on the other hand, is something most of them tolerate very well, so long as it's gradual.

Antibiotics would be a faster course of treatment, and if your angel gets into serious distress, I'd recomend them. Otherwise, keep your fish stress to a minimum, water change daily for 2 weeks, and see if you can't break the cycle down to the point where your fish can resist it on their own. I'm sure you know heat is going to speed the cycle up, and vaccuming from the bottom of the tank on daily water changes helps catch the mid life cycle for ich.

Monitor them closely, and be prepared to go to the next level of treatment if you have to. Best of luck and keep us posted!
 
thanks Halo legendary advice as always!

Am increasing very gradually (2 deg's F per day) and am already doing daily 30%'s. Might up to 50%. At this stage the Angel has literally 3 spots on it. I will update as looks like heat and water change only options at the moment.

I wanted to avoid copper meds in case the tank ever becomes a marine tank.

any more advice greatfully recieved
Chaz
 
Sounds like you're on top of it already! I did the heat and water change (no chemicals) when I first got my arrow.. He had three ich spots on his head, and the course was 18 days before they were totally faded. I ran it a solid 21 just to be sure, and kept him in the Q tank another 2 months. He's more than doubled in size since then, and shows no further outbreaks.
 
glad to hear yr little friend is cool

wow! 18days??? didn't realise it would take so long! will up my schedule to a month in that case as i was only going to go for a week!

I was going to stop temp at 84F - should i go higher?

thansk again for the great advice.
 
i read recently (looked, forgot to bookmark) that ~87 degrees produces very high mortality for the free-swimming ich. more concern for the fish and 02 at that level, though.

hmmm, it bothers me when i pick up a useful fact and cant remember the source. i imagine it surfaced in that other tread recently started by rockabilly (i think). i might just catalog that thread now....

:cool:
 
84 is most likely a good stopping place. The higher the heat, the faster you can wind down ich, but as indiginess says, you put your fish at risk. Oxygen levels start decreasing drasticly at warmer temps...

Think of your ich in terms of percentages... we're talking about a micro population after all.

Week one, I'll kill 35 percent of the little monsters

Week two, I'll nail another 25 percent

Week three, I'll murder 20 percent of the population

Week four I'll knock off the last hold outs..

Then I'll ease the temp back down slowly, to make sure I killed them all. If one of the little nasties made it, I wanna know before he winds up in my big tank!
 
I'm more of a pessimist when it comes to ich. It only takes one tomite to get onto one fish and then there will be 1,000s more. You can knock out 99% but that 1% can come back. Certainly water changes helps remove them. But remember, it isn't a hit or miss thing. It isn't like at one point in time the tomites are swimming around, then they all land and infect the fish and there are no more in the water. They are dynamic, feeding, growing, hatching at different rates, so they can be continuously hatching around the clock! (Disclaimer here...I have no documentation to back the "dynamic theory" up and is strictly my opinion based on my experience and education :) ) You change water, that covers...what, 2% of time in a 24 hour period? What are the chances you eliminated any significant % of the entire population?

indiginess is correct in that the higher heat causes stress to the newly hatched tomites and enough heat will kill them...
http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/health/ich.shtml
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39759

I would go a little higher with the heat if you think the other inhabitants can handle it.
Good luck!
 
Right BeViking.. The idea is to reduce the populations down and down and down, untill you get them all. Getting them all is darn near impossible, but the higher heat speeds up the life cycle. You nail more free swimmers percentage wise, and you're changing water off the bottom, trying to nab the bottom phase as well. Once you get your populations down, the fish becomes less stressed, and natural defences come into play. A healthy, non-stressed slime coat is the best defence against ich, and we just can't substitute that.

So first we reduce the population as much as possible with the daily ich murdering water change. Heat makes this more effective. Then, when we've beaten the pop down enough, the fish is'nt suffering, and he slimes up better. That last 1 percent is just flat out of luck, because the fish is healthy again, and they can't get to him.

Oh yeah.. what set off the ich infestation? New fish bring it in? Change in water parameters/fish stress? What was the trigger for your outbreak Charle?
 
I've been trying to work out what has caused it. Only thing I can imagine is the 3 more Cory Julii I added recently. None of them had any signs of it on them in LFS and were acting perfectly normal so I got them. Tank is dual filtered andd angels in it are juvy so not over stocking, checked water perams every day for 5 days after adding - no spikes.

Temp currently 84f - no gasping form any fish, at night am airaiting with air pump for 4hrs, to try and remove all CO2 at night just incase. Down to 1 spot on the angel in question and no spots on any other inhabitant.

Plec not so stressed anymore, nice & dark.

Thanks for all advice still doing daily changes and temp will be kept at 84.

Do you guys think it was the corries? I did have a good look before buying them (am super paranoid about disease!)
 
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