Ich problems

[bhelton14]

Hey all, new to the forums (and fish keeping in general so don’t bash me too hard lol)

I have about a 1 month old, 37 gal tank. It’s not fully cycled but getting close.
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0.25
Nitrate: 5

I know now about the nitrogen cycle and cycling a tank but in the beginning I just listened to the big box pet store employees and threw a bunch of fish in there at the beginning with some API QuickStart. I lost a lot of fish but not the point of this post.

The fish that have survived have seemed to develop ich. But I’m not sure what treatment method is safe as there is a lot of conflicting information.
Current tank inhabitants (survivors) are 5 guppies, 2 dwarf gouramis, 2 common plecos (<4 inches), 2 kuhli loaches, 4 nerite snails, some ghost shrimp, and a killifish.

Having scaleless fish, shrimp, and snails I’m hesitant to dose with any medication so I’ve opted for gradually increasing the temp. Normal temp for my tank is 80°, and I started increasing the temp by 1° daily starting today.
My tank is also planted pretty heavily so dosing with salt isn’t an option either right?

I guess my main questions are:
What temp should I raise the tank to and not kill anything?
Are there any meds that I can use that won’t kill anything including my plants?

P.S. I am dealing with a PH issue, in the beginning it was low at like 6.2, then a week later is was 7, and another week is was at an 8. So I started dosing API PH Down and I’m trying to slowing lower it, currently sitting at about 7.6
On top of that I have an ongoing algae bloom and some white cloudiness (bacterial bloom??)

Edit for typos

Edit 2: I had an African dwarf frog that seemed to develop a fungal infection (fuzzy foot?) and I have moved him/her to a quarantine tank for treatment.

 

[Byron]

On the pH issue--do not use chemicals/additives to lower (or raise) pH. This is not likely to work, and the chemicals do affect fish. The pH is tied to the GH and KH, do you have numbers for these?

Algae blooms are green, bacterial blooms are whitish. You need to sort out which and the cause (members can help once we know the type).

Do not use any preparations for ich, raise the temperature to 86F/30C for two weeks, ensure good surface disturbance to bring in oxygen. Most ich is deal with. Apparently there is a resistant strain, I've never had this, so other members will comment on that. Heat works from what I've heard in almost every case, it certainly has for me. Ich is caused by stress; the parasite has to be present, but it is stress which weakens the fish's immune system that cause the fish to succumb. Using chemicals, cycling, netting are all stressful. Don't use salt.

 

[bhelton14]

On the pH issue--do not use chemicals/additives to lower (or raise) pH. This is not likely to work, and the chemicals do affect fish. The pH is tied to the GH and KH, do you have numbers for these?

Algae blooms are green, bacterial blooms are whitish. You need to sort out which and the cause (members can help once we know the type).

Do not use any preparations for ich, raise the temperature to 86F/30C for two weeks, ensure good surface disturbance to bring in oxygen. Most ich is deal with. Apparently there is a resistant strain, I've never had this, so other members will comment on that. Heat works from what I've heard in almost every case, it certainly has for me. Ich is caused by stress; the parasite has to be present, but it is stress which weakens the fish's immune system that cause the fish to succumb. Using chemicals, cycling, netting are all stressful. Don't use salt.

I don’t have any numbers for GH or KH, I use the API master test kit and it doesn’t have that. I’ll check my local pet store and see if they can test it for me.

I know there is algae because it has built up on my substrate and aquarium glass, It also has turned the water green. I have done a 50% water change about a week ago and the green hue goes away and I’m left with a cloudy aquarium after a few days and then eventually back to green.

Ok so I will not use any medications/remedies other than slowly raising the temperature to 86° F over the next few days and leaving it like that for 2 weeks.

 

[Colin_T]

Post pictures of the fish and tank so we can identify the algae and confirm the disease.

Unless the water temperature is less than 24C, just raise the temperature to 30C (86F) over a day.

Do a huge (75-90%) water change and gravel clean the substrate before increase the temperature. this will dilute any diseases/ parasites in the water.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

 

[Byron]

I don’t have any numbers for GH or KH, I use the API master test kit and it doesn’t have that. I’ll check my local pet store and see if they can test it for me.

I know there is algae because it has built up on my substrate and aquarium glass, It also has turned the water green. I have done a 50% water change about a week ago and the green hue goes away and I’m left with a cloudy aquarium after a few days and then eventually back to green.

Ok so I will not use any medications/remedies other than slowly raising the temperature to 86° F over the next few days and leaving it like that for 2 weeks.

You may be able to find the GH/KH/pH numbers on your water authority's website. It is the initial parameters of the source water that are most important here, because these parameters are what they are due to the water itself (if that makes sense) and it tells us some things about how the parameters may behave and change in the aquarium. For example, water that is very soft (GH) and low in carbonates (KH) with a corresponding pH on the acidic side can be affected by organic substances, such as wood, dried leaves, etc, not to mention the natural organics occurred from the fish being fed, and this is important to know as some fish are well suited to this but other species may be severely impacted. On the other hand, a high GH, high KH, will likely have a basic (above 7) pH and this will not be easily adjusted because of the strong buffering capability of the water.

You need to clean the algae off the glass; do this with a sponge-type scraper during the water change. Then deal with the cause...light and nutrients need to be balanced. If you have live plants, you have to fine tune this balance. If there are no live plants, you can take more drastic action. Green water is caused by unicellular algae. Light and nutrients again. Water changes may need to be increased in volume, or scheduling, and do a thorough cleaning of the substrate, and keep the filter clean.

 

[Glenn407]

On the pH issue--do not use chemicals/additives to lower (or raise) pH. This is not likely to work, and the chemicals do affect fish. The pH is tied to the GH and KH, do you have numbers for these?

Algae blooms are green, bacterial blooms are whitish. You need to sort out which and the cause (members can help once we know the type).

Do not use any preparations for ich, raise the temperature to 86F/30C for two weeks, ensure good surface disturbance to bring in oxygen. Most ich is deal with. Apparently there is a resistant strain, I've never had this, so other members will comment on that. Heat works from what I've heard in almost every case, it certainly has for me. Ich is caused by stress; the parasite has to be present, but it is stress which weakens the fish's immune system that cause the fish to succumb. Using chemicals, cycling, netting are all stressful. Don't use salt.

So Byron I have been fortunate for years but always have it in the back of my mind. I have heard from your post and others that it is stress that causes it, that most tanks probably harbor it awaiting a chance to infect. I also read that it's highly contagious. I guess I am trying to understand that if only a stressed fish will succumb why would all the others suddenly become infected.

 

[Colin_T]

If you have white spot in a new tank and added fish recently, the disease came from the pet shop

 

[Byron]

So Byron I have been fortunate for years but always have it in the back of my mind. I have heard from your post and others that it is stress that causes it, that most tanks probably harbor it awaiting a chance to infect. I also read that it's highly contagious. I guess I am trying to understand that if only a stressed fish will succumb why would all the others suddenly become infected.

Fish that are healthy and not under acute stress will almost always be able to fight off ich. If this were not so, all the fish in the habitats would succumb and die because ich is present in freshwater and marine environments. Obviously newly acquired fish are under very severe stress, so getting them into an established aquarium immediately will certainly help to lessen the stress. I have used a permanent tank for quarantining new fish, a tank with sand, a couple of chunks of wood, and floating plants covering the surface. This tank runs permanently, whether there are fish in it or not. I have a few times seen evidence that ich may have been on one or more of the fish, but after three weeks in this QT with no intervention at all by me, all signs disappeared and never returned when the fish went into the display tank. There is evidence that ich can live in an aquarium without there being an outbreak. Fish flashing are often dealing with ich, since it first attacks a fish in the gills. All it takes is one to keep the parasite present.

Turning to stress, this is the direct cause of some 90% of all disease outbreaks in aquarium fish. The pathogen has to be present for the disease, but if the fish are healthy and not suffering undo stress, they are able to deal with it. This is a complicated subject, and you may wish to read an article on Stress I wrote a few years back. It is on our member @AbbeysDad blog, here is the link. Six pages is too much to copy over!

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[Stan510]

Ich is not hard to cure IF caught early. Raise temps- siphon the water as Ich eggs sink to the bottom,and try a RID-X blue dye treatment. Worked well for me 2 years ago on non quarantined fish that infected my regulars.

 

[Alice B]

So Byron I have been fortunate for years but always have it in the back of my mind. I have heard from your post and others that it is stress that causes it, that most tanks probably harbor it awaiting a chance to infect. I also read that it's highly contagious. I guess I am trying to understand that if only a stressed fish will succumb why would all the others suddenly become infected.

Ich came from your pet store with your fish. Treat the tank whether with heat or meds. Ich kills. On fish that don't tolerate high temps, heat kills, so researching meds isn't a bad idea.

 

[bhelton14]

Here are 2 photos of my tank. I’ve had a rough time with it so excuse the poor landscaping right now. My loaches keep knocking the plants loose.
But you can kinda see the general cloudiness and then the specs of green algae on the glass.

I did about a 25% water change and raised the temp but I intend to do a larger 50-75% water change today to dilute the ich. Increasing the temp has seemed a to work. I haven’t noticed any spread in the little white dots and actually the guppy that had the most has had a decreased. I tried getting a picture but he’s so active that I can’t get a photo that you can see it in. There’s basically only like 2 or 3 white dots on his tail now and I don’t see anything on any of the other fish.

Could it have possible not have been ich? My temp is sitting at about 83 because I was going to slowly do it (and I hadn’t seen Colin’s post yet about just taking it to 86 over the course of a day)

Last, I couldn’t find any info from my cities water authority about our tap GH KH PH. But I did learn that I have an average of 0.1 ppm nitrate and independent sources showed a nitrite presence.

 

[Byron]

You should use a sponge scraper on the inside of the front glass at every water change. It removes the biofilm to which algae will attach. I usually do not see anything on the glass, but I have been doing this for several years and I never have algae on the glass--except when I miss doing it for two weeks. You can do the other glass panels, up to you.

Nitrate at 0.1 ppm is nothing to worry about at all, that is so minimal as to be zero. You do need to track down the GH at least of your source water.

 

[Stan510]

If all you have is a small hang on back filter? Its not enough. Get a larger one or use another to make two.
Just warm the water and treat with that RID X by Kordon.