whitespot and sensitive soft water fish

[DrNik]

Hi everyone,
Got a bit of a dilemma here.
My fishtank is a heavily planted acid softwater community (pH=6.5;Gh=2; amonia and nitrite zero; nitrate close to zero, plants are doing most of the job) centred around a pair of breeding Apistogramma trifasciata. Other fishes: 8 silver hatchets, 8 Harlequins, 2 Corydoras sterbai, a bulldog pleco, and a farlowella to which I recently added a pair of bettas (which are intended for another tank) and 3 amano shrimps.
Now here comes my problem: spotted whitespot on some of the hatchets this morning.
I once had a similar setup, which I treated with half-dose off-the-shelf "whitespot treatment" (presumably based on formalin and malaquite green), and ended up loosing 6 hatchets, and 4 farlowellas... not happy at all!
Has any of you got any experience treating soft water tanks for whitespot?
I'm in desperate need of advice!!!

Cheers!

nik

 

[echoofformless]

I used Kordon's Rid-Ich and raised the temp to a little over 86. Didn't lose anyone - gourami, betta, harlequin razzies, amano shrimp, yoyo loaches, zebra d.

 

[rosita]

I highly recommend following the directions in the article in the link below: it is by far the least harmful to all freshwater fish if followed closely and you observe your fish alot. I've used the salt/heat treatment a year ago when I first started keeping fish, and it took care of it without a problem. Even with a couple of cories. I know you're probably concerned about your "scaleless" fish; postings in AC will provide you plenty of evidence that, unless the fish are extremely infested or you don't follow the routine all the way through (recommendation is 3 weeks to kill cyst hatchings). Good luck with the fishies!!
***When you start adding OTC medications, esp. for ich/whitespot, you may be putting poisons in your tank which may be harmful to some, but not to others. Also, some are extremely difficult to remove; salt just takes a series of waterchanges. Personally, I had no luck with a few different meds.

http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88601

 

[echoofformless]

While it is true that the meds can be troublesome, at the same time it took me lots of research and thread jumping to decide on the Kordon's Rid Ich, and I was quite satisfied with the results. As I said, I lost no one. The ich has been gone for a year and all of my fish are still alive to this day except the shrimp who died a few weeks ago. Rid Ich says on the bottle that it is specially formulated for sensitive fish such as loaches and gouramis.

Just want to make sure that is clear.

 

[Ulan]

It really depends on the fish. My otos and the bristlenose seemed to be fine with the salt/heat treatment, but my tetras were dying, and the cories were suffering terribly and passing out from time to time (seeing your fish floating belly up near the surface is not nice). My tetras and my cories were much better off with the Rid-Ich+ treatment.

Unfortunately, it's hard to tell up front what is better for your fish. I've never seen anyone collecting data about treatments, and the different strains of ich will produce different patterns.

 

[DrNik]

thanks

Many thanks for all the advice!
I will keep you updated with my "Ich-odessy"....