ICH OUTBREAK!

[austin]

I had a horrible outbrek of ICH that all the ICh medications could not cure, it claimed my freshwater puffer along with a few of his other tank mates. They are now all gone, the tank is empyty but how long should I wait before restocking it, and should I recycle the tank with new water? Thanks for the help, a sad Phish man~
Austin

 

[big_fresh]

How sad to hear about your puffer fish

I don't think it is necessary to do a complete water change. Since you have no more fish in the tank, the best thing to do is to increase the speed of the ICH lifecycle by turning up your tank temperature.

This will mean that ICH will reach the free swimming form which needs to find a fish host within 24 hours otherwise it will die.

So if you pump your tank temp to around 30 degrees centrigrade and then let the tank run for about a week, you would most likely kill a greater portion of the parasites and you won't need to do any extra-ordianry water changes.

Anyway the pinned ICH section is a good source of info....

(you can also chuck in Salt but then getting it out of the tank for sensitive species like cory's could be a problem).

 

[iloveyou]

i just completely cleaned out my 10 gallon betta breeding tank as it had ick also... id do the total cleaning... but thats just me... if u wait about a week with high temperatures and do a couple water changes you should be safe... i had time so i decided to clean the whole thing out.. good luck with your next fish

 

[Tempestuousfury]

Just remember, ich is always going to be in your tank. if conditions deteriorate, the parasites multiply and kill everything.

If you want to be sure, you could disinfect your tank, but that'd involved a bunch of chemicals and recycling. It'd be better to just up the temp and leave it for a while. Add fish gradually and reduce the amount of pollutants in the water.