Ich...have Lost A Ton Of Fish In A Matter Of Days

[missyangeljunk]

We have a 36 (I think) gallon fish tank.

2 cories
2 ottos
3 tetras
1 large rainbow
2 small new rainbow

We've done multiple water tests over the last week and every time, the only thing slightly high was PH, and that has been corrected. This is NOT my fish tank, and is my husband's. I don't know all of the specifics because it isn't my tank and have sent him an email asking because I can't remember what he told me about it earlier. We have had this fish tank for a number of years, and until this morning, our oldest fish was five years old, and had made it through THREE moves across the country...he did not make it through what is happening now.

This is the situation...

One week ago, we bought some new rainbow fish to add to our tank. We bought the fish from a store we had never used before but came with recommendations from others. We did not quarantine the fish, yes, I know...painfully stupid and we are suffering, and our fish are intensely.

Three days after adding them, we lost a fish. It didn't seem too bad because we chalked it up to change and stress. The next day, three were dead....almost all old fish. Note...every fish who died started acting really slow and eventually lost so much color some of them turned almost white (like lost all of their color) within hours and then died. A few days later....we have a full blown case of Ich. I don't know if Ich was to cause for the death of the others, but all I know is we had fish, now we are watching them die. Over and over and over again.

This is what I've done...
Added Ich medicine
Very slowly turning the heat up
Removed the carbon filter

What I need to know is...
Should I move them, the filter, some of the water, and the heater to a new 10 gallon or so tank for right now and treat them that way?
If yes....then how do I clean their old tank to make sure everything is out of it?

If no...how can I clean the gravel to ensure Ich doesn't keep happening over and over again?
Should I remove the plants and rocks to clean them? When do I put them back in?
Should I add salt? How much?

I'm not expecting the large rainbow to live over the next two days. I'm doing my best, but he is in bad shape and has lost most of his color like the others did before they died. I've read mixed information about if the cories will live through the high heat and the medicine.

Please help me save these fish.

 

[fluttermoth]

Hi there, to the forum, and I'm sorry for your losses

First of all, I think you're absolutely right; the initial deaths won't have been due to ich; healthy fish take quite a long time to die from it and you'd have seen the white spots for a while before they died. The ich they have now is probably due to that stressful incident, whatever it was, though of course you'll have to treat it now.

I wouldn't turn the heat up, or use salt; as you say it won't be good for the cories; heat and salt is recommended for certain fish that can't tolerate the chemicals in the medicines; if you're using an ich med, you don't need to do those things. The heat would have to be above 30°C for at least a week to kill the parasite, and the cories and otos won't tolerate salt.

Keep the fish where they are, as the whole tank will be infected. The ich parasite passes through various stages and can only be killed by the meds when they're in the free swimming stage; it has two 'encysted' stages, one on the fish (the white spots) and one in the gravel, so it's very important to keep dosing the meds as per the instructions, even if the fish look better, as else it will come back.

As for the intitial problems..it's hard to say, but I suspect the new fish may have been carrying some diesease that they were immune to but your old fish weren't. I am only guessing, but had a similar thing happen to me last year. Or you could have changed or overcleaned your filter and lost your good bacteria, causing an ammonia spike, perhaps?

Hope some of that helps.

 

[balajake]

Some white spot meds don't work As well as others. Waterlife Protozin come highly reccomended on the forum

 

[missyangeljunk]

We did a thorough cleaning of the tank a couple of days before everyone started dying. We checked the water right afterwards, two days later, then again yesterday...and I checked the PH level again today myself. By thorough, I mean 60% water change, maybe 50%...I cleaned the plants with just water, and we cleaned gunk off of the filter with just water. The gravel was vacuumed really well. We had some sort of albino bristlenose who was about six years old, he passed away in December of what we believe is natural causes. We just left the tank to him previously and the algae was never an issue, well during this cleaning we also had to clean the glass of the tank as we had noticed an algae problem.

No chemicals are used in the cleaning, and I only use paper towels and hot water to rub gunk off of the plastic plants.

I hope we didn't cause a spike. We've never had an issue before, and I didn't know that was a possibility to be honest. I'm not for sure if my husband knows of it, but I'll be telling him when I see him next week. He had a fish tank in his office for three years with no issue like this, and we've had one at home for so many years.

I'm just blown away by this and it has been really hard to watch them die. Our little red rainbow (I only know them by color) was doing fine until a couple of days ago...yesterday he golden in large sections and I told my husband that he was losing his colors like the others. I found the Ich this morning, and realized he wasn't darting in front of me begging for food...and we found him behind a plant.

I think we were so focused on finding this mystery thing that was killing our fish that we missed the Ich. Someone MUST have shown symptoms before this morning when they all have little white bumps on them.

*Sigh*.

Okay, so no more turning up the temp. I don't want to lose our cory cats due to heat. I won't move any fish either.

I'm using BioSpheres Maracide. My husband and I got it this morning, it was the only liquid medicine for Ich there was and he was concerned about the powder/pills dissolving and being eaten by the cories. Also, I looked online at the local pet stores and can't find the Waterlife Protozin.

If after reading this you see something that makes you go "Oh please never do that again", please tell me and I won't for sure. I just want the remaining fish to get through this.

 

[fluttermoth]

Was it tap water or old tank water you used to clean the filter?

 

[missyangeljunk]

Was it tap water or old tank water you used to clean the filter?

It was tap water. If that was it, then plain and simple that was my decision. It had gunk crusted on the side of it, and we had just moved it back into the dining room so we could see it better. I didn't want there to be gunk on it that was visible.

I'm assuming simply because you felt the need to pose this question....using tap water to do something like that would cause a problem? What would that have done and what should I do in the future? The substrate (not for sure what it is called) that houses the bacteria for the tank was not cleaned by the way, and not changed. Only the filter case.

My husband just replied back that the ammonia level was sitting at 0 two days after the water change. I did make him get a new test kit that night after finding out how old the one we had was...we tested that night again, and the different tests (except PH) were normal. PH had been sitting around 8.0. It's between 7.6 and 7.8 right now. Just a note, the PH always stays around that level and it hasn't posed a problem before. At least that is what my husband tells me. I asked him to lower it a bit since that was our only outlier this week while the fish were dying.

I hope I'm giving enough information.

I've never seen a perfectly healthy acting fish suddenly just go pale and die. We've had disease before, it's impossible to have a fish tank and not experience something...but we've always had symptoms, a *thing* to treat and manage.

If this could have been caused by the tap water thing...not good and what an awful way to learn a lesson I won't forget.

 

[fluttermoth]

If you had cleaned the 'media' (that's the stuff inside the filter; 'substrate' is the sand or gravel on the bottom of the tank, although, cofusingly there is a media called 'substrat' ) with tap water, that would have killed the beneficial bacteria, but as you only cleaned the casing, I doubt whether that was the cause, so you can stop blaming yourself now!

You've certainly given enough information, but it may be one of those things that we never manage to pin down to a cause; it happens in fishkeeping sometimes and is very frustrating.

At least you can treat the remaining fish for the ich and hope that the worst is over; oh, and just as an aside, it's better not to try and change the pH of the tank; it can lead to fluctuations in pH levels that aren't good for fish; but won't have had anything to do with your current problems, I'm sure.

Very best of luck; do post back if anything else happens.

 

[missyangeljunk]

*Media*! That is what my husband calls it. I'm glad you figured out what I meant. Again, I don't normally need to manage this stuff myself, but he works with the military and unfortunately he won't be here but perhaps an hour or two a day for the next week or so. We won't even see each other during that time!

I started learning a bit when he was overseas last year when I had to do water changes. This has been way more in depth though the last week. At least if he goes overseas again, I'll do even better with them!

I'm glad that cleaning that likely didn't hurt them. I was really worried.

Okay...well, I'll keep following the directions on the medicine which says to treat them on day 1, 3 and 5. So I'll do that this week, and it doesn't say to do a water change of any sort. Thank you for all of your answers and help. I didn't know what else to do! At least I know we are moving in the right direction.

 

[balajake]

We did a thorough cleaning of the tank a couple of days before everyone started dying. We checked the water right afterwards, two days later, then again yesterday...and I checked the PH level again today myself. By thorough, I mean 60% water change, maybe 50%...I cleaned the plants with just water, and we cleaned gunk off of the filter with just water. The gravel was vacuumed really well. We had some sort of albino bristlenose who was about six years old, he passed away in December of what we believe is natural causes. We just left the tank to him previously and the algae was never an issue, well during this cleaning we also had to clean the glass of the tank as we had noticed an algae problem.

No chemicals are used in the cleaning, and I only use paper towels and hot water to rub gunk off of the plastic plants.

I hope we didn't cause a spike. We've never had an issue before, and I didn't know that was a possibility to be honest. I'm not for sure if my husband knows of it, but I'll be telling him when I see him next week. He had a fish tank in his office for three years with no issue like this, and we've had one at home for so many years.

I'm just blown away by this and it has been really hard to watch them die. Our little red rainbow (I only know them by color) was doing fine until a couple of days ago...yesterday he golden in large sections and I told my husband that he was losing his colors like the others. I found the Ich this morning, and realized he wasn't darting in front of me begging for food...and we found him behind a plant.

I think we were so focused on finding this mystery thing that was killing our fish that we missed the Ich. Someone MUST have shown symptoms before this morning when they all have little white bumps on them.

*Sigh*.

Okay, so no more turning up the temp. I don't want to lose our cory cats due to heat. I won't move any fish either.

I'm using BioSpheres Maracide. My husband and I got it this morning, it was the only liquid medicine for Ich there was and he was concerned about the powder/pills dissolving and being eaten by the cories. Also, I looked online at the local pet stores and can't find the Waterlife Protozin.

If after reading this you see something that makes you go "Oh please never do that again", please tell me and I won't for sure. I just want the remaining fish to get through this.

you can get Protozin on ebay.

 

[ShaneL]

What temperature are you at currently? I've had Corys at 28c/ 82f to get rid of white spot and they were fine. In my mind a few days temperature discomfort is a lot better than repeated dosing of the white spot medicine that they are quite sensitive to.

Above 30c will usually kill off white spot fairly quickly but the important thing about raising the temperature is that it will quicken the ich life cycle. The medicine will only kill any free swimming parasites but not the cysts, if the temperature isn't high enough it can be more than a month before they hatch meaning you have to repeatedly start over with it. Personally I would get it as close to 30c as you can and try to find out what treatment is best for scaleless fish like corys. Any medicine you use is going to be much more dangerous to them than the temperature so the quicker you can get it over with the better.

 

[missyangeljunk]

Right now the temp is at 80 degrees.

The meds say to dose them on day 1, 3, and 5. I gave them meds again today, but I'm beginning to think that by day 5 during what is supposed to be the last day, it won't be gone or anywhere near it.

 

[ShaneL]

80 is good, just make sure enough oxygen is getting into the water as oxygen levels fall as the temperature rises. If you start to see fish gasping at the top you'll have to drop it a bit.

I would say to keep dosing with the medicine until you haven't seen a white spot for a week. What medicine are you using? From what I remember the day 5 dose repeated every 2 days with a 30% water change on those days should be ok with the bonus that you're reducing any free swimming ones by that proportion each time as well. After 5-7 days with no spots lay off the medicine and keep up the water changes for at least another 6-8 days.

While all this is going on try and keep your fish as free from stress as you can. Test your water daily and if you are getting an ammonia spike from too many water changes reduce the amount of changes you are doing. Try and get them to keep eating and if you have any water treatment with aloe vera then add that to help them heal up. If they will eat food that has been soaked in garlic all the better as it will help them recover too.

Don't worry if the spots don't seem to be dissappearing yet- each one is like a cut that just needs to heal up and hopefully that will happen in the next few days. What you should be getting by now is less new spots appearing.

Best of luck As you can probably tell I had a nightmare with this in the past but it can be overcome If you have time do some reading up on the ich life cycle, once you understand that you can beat it.

 

[snazy]

Fish can be infected with ich for a week or two before any of the white spots appear. So the fish that initially died without signs probably already had it but were weak enough to die before it was visible.
The white spot is actually the parasite coming through the skin after developing inside the fish for a while. Once it falls off the fish it is then vulnerable to medication hence the previous advise to keep treating for a good while after all visible signs are gone.

 

[missyangeljunk]

I'm using BioSpheres Maracide. I can only find Protozin on eBay from the UK. That won't help me unless I want to treat them with in in about two weeks. Looking online, it looks like the ingredients are the same as what I'm using now. It's really hard to find the ingredients for Protozin though, so I'm not 100% sure on that.

The instructions say to dose them on days 1,3 and 5. That I don't need to remove the carbon filter (I did anyway) and no water changes are needed.

Water today
Ammonia - Somewhere between 0 ppm and .25 ppm
Nitrites - 0 ppm
Nitrate - Somewhere between 5 ppm and 10 ppm

I need some guidance. Should I do a water change? If so, how much?

Also, what do I do after day 5? Do I keep treating them on an every other day schedule? Sorry, totally new to this kind of thing and don't know.

 

[ShaneL]

Every other day after day 5 with a 30% water change just before each dose was the magic formula for me. With that and the temperature you have the tank at you should see an improvement pretty quickly.