Can newborn guppy fry be treated for ich?

[biofish]

So I bought a couple guppies, one male one female, and they’re in my QT tank. I could’ve sworn forwards and backwards that the female wasn’t pregnant. Me and my sister both agreed on her because we physically could not even see her uterus and figured she was either sterile or barely pregnant.

That was a week and half ago.

And jokes on us.

At the one week mark she’s been in the QT, she popped out 7 fry and now she miraculously has a dark gravid spot and I’m doubting all of my life choices and eyeballs because I could have sworn it wasn’t big at all a week ago.

And I know moving a female guppy that close to their due date is a no no for her health so I’m kicking myself for that. And the one male is harassing her quite a bit. So few days later after the fry, I see stupid white spots on her tail that can only be one thing and one thing only. I lost almost an entire tank of fish to ich when I first started fish keeping and I’m thanking whatever god exists that the ich showed up a week and a half into her QT, rather than half a week later and she would’ve been in the main tank.

But that brings me back to my question. The fry are only a couple days old but they have definitely been exposed to ich. Can I treat them with ich-x or do I have to try my best with upping the temp of the water, salt (is salt okay??), and clean water? The fry are almost certainly inbred so I’m not sure how well their tiny immune systems are.

 

[DragonScales+Doubletails]

I wouldn't treat them at all. others may disagree. I would remove the fry that show no ich (ick) into a separate container with water from the main tank. and monitor them for a while.
@Colin_T

 

[biofish]

I wouldn't treat them at all. others may disagree. I would remove the fry that show no ich (ick) into a separate container with water from the main tank. and monitor them for a while.
@Colin_T

I removed the fry the same day they were born which was two days ago and I noticed the ich on the mother today.

 

[itiwhetu]

You should only treat ich with heat and the extra heat won't hurt your fry.

 

[Colin_T]

As @itiwhetu said, use heat, it will treat the adults and babies.

Raise the water temperature to 30C (86F) and keep it there for 2 weeks, or at least 1 week after all the white dots have gone.

Before you raise the temperature, do a huge (80-90%) water change and gravel clean the substrate. Clean the filter too if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. And increase aeration/ surface turbulence to maximise oxygen levels.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

Monitor the babies because they could have white spot that might not show up for a week. In fact I would just heat both tanks or put the babies back with the parents and heat one tank. Insulate the base, back and sides of the tank with 1 inch thick polystyrene foam, and put a coverglass on the tank.

Have lots of plants in the adult tank and the babies can hide in them. feed the adults well and do water changes if there is any ammonia or nitrite readings.

 

[biofish]

You should only treat ich with heat and the extra heat won't hurt your fry.

I know bit I’m just so scared to use only that

My first tank got ich because I hadn’t learned what to look for yet and didn’t have a QT tank yet… so I brought home an infected fish without realizing it and that’s all she wrote. My Cory catfish, glo zebra’s, and pleco weren’t hurt but my guppy population was decimated. It took a long time for the ich x to get delivered to my house and the ich eventually vanished either from the medication or temp, I’m not sure.

And honestly, thinking back on the event, I think there was something else going on my my tank. I saw spots on the otos i had bought a couple days after I bought them (they were the infected ones, I immediately went back to the LFS and to the tank I bought them from and yeah. The fish all had ich and the store hadn’t noticed yet. I’ve never bought an oto again and I’ve hardly bought from this store again because I started noticing ich throughout many of their tanks since.) I think it was something else ontop of ich though because I never once saw spots on any of the other fish. Only the otos (who all died). But a lot of my guppies fins at the time were clamping tight and they were flopping on the substrate. I can’t remember how many guppies I had but I think only 3 survived whatever was going on. I did daily 50% water changes during the storm to try and help their chances. I retired the tank for several months and gave it the washing of a lifetime when I needed to use it again.

But ich still makes be incredibly nervous as a result. Having so many fish dying so rapidly was horrifying.

 

[Naughts]

Just heat works, I've had success with it. In fact it's dangerous to do too many things at once as it stresses the fish. For example heat plus medication will deplete the oxygen too much.
Of the two, heat is natural, fry are less likely to survive medication.

 

[biofish]

Bisiciwjvjaiuciaigie I just bought 6 rummy nose tetra YESTERDAY to give my dad for his birthday in a couple weeks and I go to check on them today and ba bada ba ICH! I checked them and their surrounding tanks so thoroughly too

Water temp is going up, salt has been added, and their tank covered to prevent light from entering. I accidentally had the tank too hot already (82° when I typically kept them at 78°) so I think that sped up the life cycle. Having ich the day after buying them seems a bit too fast for the infection to have happened at my place so I think they were already infected and my tank temp sped it up.

But is it just me or has every fish store had issues with ich lately? I haven’t purchased much because (well for one thing I haven’t had any deaths so I’ve really had no need to) almost all my LFS’s have a lot of ich infested tanks lately. Must be something in the water

But the mother and all of the fry in my initial post survived and are very healthy! The fry are exact copies of their mother. 5 females 2 males. And the lady has since dropped another batch of 31!

 

[Colin_T]

You don't need to black out a tank when treating white spot.
Some people black out a tank when treating velvet but that does not apply to white spot, they are different organisms.

Salt does nothing to kill white spot so don't use it for white spot.

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The fish suppliers around the world sometimes have outbreaks of diseases and send contaminated fish to their customers. They don't normally do it deliberately, but sometimes fish get sent out with a few diseases. This tends to be cyclical and happen for a few weeks/ months each year and might include diseases like white spot or other external protozoan parasites, or bacterial infections like Columnaris.

If you have only had the fish for 2 days, the fish were already infected with white spot when you got them.

 

[biofish]

You don't need to black out a tank when treating white spot.
Some people black out a tank when treating velvet but that does not apply to white spot, they are different organisms.

Salt does nothing to kill white spot so don't use it for white spot.

--------------
The fish suppliers around the world sometimes have outbreaks of diseases and send contaminated fish to their customers. They don't normally do it deliberately, but sometimes fish get sent out with a few diseases. This tends to be cyclical and happen for a few weeks/ months each year and might include diseases like white spot or other external protozoan parasites, or bacterial infections like Columnaris.

If you have only had the fish for 2 days, the fish were already infected with white spot when you got them.

Noted! I’ll slowly clean the salt out! And it’s nice to know that about the lights. The tetra’s are very lovely and I would love to be able watch them.

And yeah. I know it’s not on purpose, so while I’m ranting I’m not actually mad at the fish stores. (I’ll call them in the morning when the open to inform them of the outbreak). Mild annoyance because it’s the second time in a row while I bought fish that they had ich (different shops too). Each tetra only has one spot on them and I made sure to not put any of their old tank water in my QT tank so I think the outbreak is on the small side and will be dealt with quickly~

The success of my guppy recovering makes me much more confident that the tetra’s will pull through!

 

[biofish]

Soooo 2 rummy nose tetras and 2 guppies in my QT tank have died so far and the rest of my fish have white spots still, more than I saw in the initial outbreak. The temp is at 86° And it’s been a week. Thoughts?

My sister wants to use ichX but I want to get your thoughts first

 

[Colin_T]

Is the water temperature being tested in the water or by a thermometer on the outside of the tank?

You can either raise the temp another degree or 2 or reduce it and add medication. However, if it hasn't responded in a week, you might have a heat resistant strain and medication should be used instead.

If you use the chemicals, drop the water temperature to 25C otherwise the fish will probably suffocate.

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Before you treat, do the following.
Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge. This removes the biofilm on the glass and the biofilm will contain lots of harmful bacteria, fungus, protozoans and various other microscopic life forms.

Do a 80-90% water change and gravel clean the substrate. The water changes and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in. It also removes a lot of the gunk and this means any medication can work on treating the fish instead of being wasted killing the pathogens in the gunk.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use them. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration to maximise the dissolved oxygen in the water.

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To work out the volume of water in the tank:
measure length x width x height in cm.
divide by 1000.
= volume in litres.

When you measure the height, measure from the top of the substrate to the top of the water level.

If you have big rocks or driftwood in the tank, remove these before measuring the height of the water level so you get a more accurate water volume.

You can use a permanent marker to draw a line on the tank at the water level and put down how many litres are in the tank at that level.

There is a calculator/ converter in the "FishForum.net Calculator" under "Useful Links" at the bottom of this page that will let you convert litres to gallons if you need it.

Remove carbon from the filter before treating with chemicals or it will adsorb the medication and stop it working. You do not need to remove the carbon if you use salt.