How to treat ich when I have aquarium salts in the water?

[SwanseaGuppies]

Hi there,

Some of my guppies have ich, but I have aquarium salts in the water. The only ich treatment I can find contains formaldehyde and malachite green oxalate. I've been told that this is lethal when combined with aquarium salts. Any advice on what I can do?

Thanks

 

[Animallover😍]

You can treat ich by slowly raising the temperature to 86 degrees over the week.

 

[SwanseaGuppies]

You can treat ich by slowly raising the temperature to 86 degrees over the week.

That's nice and straight forward. Thank you

 

[Colin_T]

Don't raise it over a week. You need to get the temperature up to 30C (86F) asap and keep it there for 2 weeks, or at least 1 week after all the white spots have gone.

If you have the fish in cool water (less than 24C), then raise it up over 2 days.
If the water is 24C, raise it up to 30C over 24 hours.
If the temperature is 26C or above, just turn the heater up to 30C and let it go up.

Before you raise the temperature, do a 80-90% water change and complete gravel clean. Clean the filter too. This will remove a lot of the parasites and leave fewer behind to reinfect the fish.

If you are raising the temperature over 2 days, do a big water change and gravel clean each day until the temp is 30C.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

---------------
The following link has information about white spot and various ways to treat it. Post #1 and post #16 are worth a read.

What is ICH?

This is a common question that is often asked, what is ich and how is it recognisable and what causes it? The real term is ICHTHYOPHTHIRIASIS. OR commonly known as white spot. It is an extremely comon parasite that affects aquarium fish. It is highly infectious and potentially lethal and...

www.fishforums.net

 

[Essjay]

Question - why do you have aquarium salts in the tank? Are you treating for some other condition besides ich?

 

[SwanseaGuppies]

Question - why do you have aquarium salts in the tank? Are you treating for some other condition besides ich?

That is kind of a long story, but the short version is that it's left over from a week or two ago when my fish were mysteriously dying and I never quite got to the bottom of it. I think I bought some new fish and accidentally introduced an infection, but I couldn't see any visible signs of infection (couldn't get any decent photos either). They just started hiding in the plants and lying on the bottom of the tank, then they'd die a day later. It seems that only my platies and one variety of guppies were susceptible. At the rate they were dying, I was quite desperate to fix it, but I never quite got to the bottom of it. Someone recommended that I try aquarium salts, but from what I understand, there's no way to get the salt out of the water, you just have to keep doing water changes to dilute it. Anyway, the remaining guppies now have ich.

 

[SwanseaGuppies]

Don't raise it over a week. You need to get the temperature up to 30C (86F) asap and keep it there for 2 weeks, or at least 1 week after all the white spots have gone.

If you have the fish in cool water (less than 24C), then raise it up over 2 days.
If the water is 24C, raise it up to 30C over 24 hours.
If the temperature is 26C or above, just turn the heater up to 30C and let it go up.

Before you raise the temperature, do a 80-90% water change and complete gravel clean. Clean the filter too. This will remove a lot of the parasites and leave fewer behind to reinfect the fish.

If you are raising the temperature over 2 days, do a big water change and gravel clean each day until the temp is 30C.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

---------------
The following link has information about white spot and various ways to treat it. Post #1 and post #16 are worth a read.

What is ICH?

This is a common question that is often asked, what is ich and how is it recognisable and what causes it? The real term is ICHTHYOPHTHIRIASIS. OR commonly known as white spot. It is an extremely comon parasite that affects aquarium fish. It is highly infectious and potentially lethal and...

www.fishforums.net

Thank you for all your help, Colin. It's so helpful to have someone so knowledgable on here to help us starting out.

 

[Essjay]

@SwanseaGuppies Ah, yes I remember your thread about that now. I didn't post in that thread as I did not know what to suggest

As for removing salt, yes diluting it with water changes is the only way.

 

[itiwhetu]

Are you sure it is ich, post a couple of photos so that @Colin_T can confirm.

 

[Bruce Leyland-Jones]

If it is ich, you can continue with your aquarium salt and it'll have no effect on ich treatment.
If it is ich, then simply increasing your tank temperature would be enough to effectively treat it.

Some in here believe that 'natural' freshwater water should be salt-free and that salt should only be added as a treatment, when necessary.
For myself, I can pull on my extensive biological knowledge and I note that the real waters that fish live in are a long, long way from the sanitised, sterilised, mineral and electrolyte-free waters many of us get from our taps.
As a consequence, I maintain a low level of aquarium salt in my tanks and my fish are genuinely thriving.