Ich

[njnauticalnut]

I think I have an outbreak of ich in my tank. As I have never had it before, I am not 100% certain, however, one of my gouramis has a white spot that looks like a grain of salt not far from his mouth and one of my platys has white spots on her tail that seem three dimensional. Another gourami has a spot on his left side, but that looks more like a tear and I had posted about that earlier this week.

The tank is pretty new, was fishless cycled for 6 weeks and some of the fish were added 3 weeks ago and a few more were added since.

My water parameters are amonia 0ppm, nitrite 0ppm, nitrate 5ppm, PH 7.2

I do 20-30% water changes weekly.

Want to make sure that it sounds like ich to you folks and then what do you recommend or have used to treat it? It is contagious, correct?

Thanks!

 

[mashimaro_0000]

Ich is contagious you can use QUICK Qure to solve this mess..... it will take over a week to fix it... you said never happend before right??? to me every newtank has this kind of problem (and tank about 3 months old considered be matured tank) also when you were changing water into the tank, was the water too cold compared to the tank's own water temperature? cold water may cause this too,,,, try making your tank temp at 80F over night to see did that work for you,,, but don't do it mroe than a night becase that may harm your fish.....

if you are certain you have ich in your tank, do water changes according to the insturction on quickqure ( i think its every 4 days to do a water change) then repeat dosage until you see ich no more! also add AQURIUM slat in your tank too ( IF YOU DO NOT HAVE CORY in your tank!)



most importantly... i think you got ich in your tank! normally ich won't kill your fish unless your fish got completely covered by it..... so don'y worry... just a note for you. this will be a long and hard battle for you, good luck!

 

[njnauticalnut]

I think that it is definitely ich as another platy has a spot on his mouth.

The water I add when I do a water change is almost exactly the same temp as the water in the tank.

I have medication by Mardel called CopperSafe which treats ich, velvet, and external parasites so I will go by the directions for usage. I know that I should take out the carbon that is in my filter cartridge. I will raise the temp in the tank a bit as I know that helps.

According to the instructions, I do not need to do a water change before starting the meds if the water parameters are good which they are. Do you all agree? Also, the instructions do not say anything about doing water changes during treatments, but I should them every 4 days?

I have 3 corys, 2 rubber-lipped plecos and 2 otos so I do not believe I should add any aquarium salt because of them, correct?

I am going to begin treatment tonight..

 

[mashimaro_0000]

yes do not add salt to the tank then ( may be a pinch of salt if that's my tank lol, i will not be responsible for any that happens to yuor tank >.< ) i am pretty sure that you need to do a water change using any medication that deals ich.... because most compund are very strong..... if those chemial accumulate in the tank water may be come danger the fish....... just read the instruction once more.... you have to watch you water quality too..... new tanks have ich usually caused by bad water.... check your water more frequently then... good luck

 

[njnauticalnut]

Since my tank is still new, I check my water almost daily, occasionally I miss a day. When I first added the first group of fish, I had a small amonia spike of .5ppm so I did water changes daily until I got it down to 0. Since then my water parameters have remained perfect.

The instructions on the CopperSafe do not give directions on how often I should do water changes. The instructions do say to add the med to new water when regular water changes are done. I will continue to monitor my water parameters as well. The fish are not acting any differently and are certainly not covered in white spots. Two fish have one spot, and two-three fish have a few smaller spots. I hope this treatments work okay, hope I caught it in time and they all come out of it just fine.

I was amazed that I used the entire bottle of med in my tank. It was 1 teaspoon for every 4 gallons. I will be off to the store to get more so I have some on hand when I do water changes. Since my tanks in the past were smaller, this surprised me!