More On Ich...

[reignofcheese]

Hello fellow fish keepers.

I am not new in any way to fish, but have a problem I have never encountered since I first started keeping fish, poorly (at first), twenty years ago, and it ended up with a ruined tank.

Anyway, I have an established 20 gallon Long tank with a new pair of Rams that have been doing well for about two weeks now, but the male has come down with ich. The tank is heavily planted, the nitrates are 0, and I know conditions could not have caused this, so I'm guessing it was from the stress of being introduced? he certainly did not come home with it, not visibly.

I monitor my fish carefully on a daily basis and am sure I caught it right away, at least, at the first visible sign. I moved him to a 10 gallon med tank for now, have not started doing anything about it except gradually turning up the heat.

That's the background, now for my two main questions:

1: Rams can take high heat and I've got the aeration to make up for it, so I'm wondering if anyone has any experience dealing with this problem with just heat? I really don't want to use meds or salt if I can help it

2: The fish was removed right away from the main tank, and none of the other fish, including the female, show signs of the issue so far. Is it possible I caught it in time, that it won't infect my tank? This question is more musing than anything, but I'm pretty sure my plants won't put up with heat or salt or anything typically used to fix this issue.

Thanks!

 

[mtv8dmarine]

I think the general rule of thumb when dealing with ich is by the time you see it, you should treat the entire tank not just the individual fish. The tricky thing with fish as I've learned from not using a quarantine tank in the past (boy did I learn) is that ich is not always detectable. In fact, chances are it came with the fish hidden so small we can't see it in the gills.

Subsequent reading after my issues has shown that only 4-5% of us fish hobbyists even use a quarantine tank. And I wonder why other than impulsiveness that is except to see our new fish swimming in our main tank. A quarantine tank can be cheap and simple. Saving us a lot of money and heartache instead of risking a tank infection.

I treated mine once with just heat before and it didn't work in the long run. However, everything appeared fine with ALL of the fish 4 days before I discontinued heat treatment. A few days later...it reappeared. I don't know honestly if it failed to work because of something I didn't notice. Although at the time everything looked normal.

If rams are a pretty hardy fish than I would say try introducing salt. You can and should start out dosing no more than 1 tsp./gal. Be sure to dissolve the salt in tank water and then pouring the solution into a high flow area of the tank. Don't just dump salt in.

I've read the lifecycle information a hundred times over but somehow I wonder if it still eludes me in comprehension. Your fish likely came home with it invisibly either on it (likely the gills) or in the water. If you netted your ram and didn't pour any LFS water into your tank then you have the answer of how it got there. Back on point...that invisible ich parasite at some point dropped off your fish and into your tank. Some time later, it hatched many new spores which went searching for a living organism. It then found your ram and after attaching and doing it's thing became visible to you. It likely found your ram because it already had a weakened system from being a carrier in the first place. The other fish may have gotten lucky since their slime coat was still at 100%. Eventually though, a swimmer might successfully attach. So this is my interpretation and why I think it's quite possibly not just isolated to your single fish. It's in the tank too.

Unfortunately I don't know enough about rams other than they are Ph sensitive. That's the extent of my knowledge.

Bottom line, you can treat it with only heat but be sure that you keep the heat up at least 3 days after you last see the ich on your fish. That's about all you can do without treating with salt or chemicals.

Just as a reference here's a very thorough explanation of ich. http/www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/health/ich.shtml

 

[karin]

You can look at my thread just to get an idea about my experience. Here is the thing, my tetras seemed to respond well to just heat and I say "seemed" because I'm just basing this on they had white spots and then they got rid of them quickly. I really don't know if the "just heat" would have worked in the long run, but it seems that some people have had the experience that it does work. The keyhole cichlid got worse and worse with just heat so I've switched to the meds. And with that cichlid the meds are taking a long time to work on the visible symptoms. So fish respond differently. Makes lots of sense really if you stand back and think about the breeding of tropical fish. I'm certain their are plenty of weakling fish as a result of unnatural breeding conditions. These fish will need the harshest of medications to rid of disease while other healthy specimens can respond quickly to just heat. Like so many things there is no one certain way in my book despite what people might preach based on experience alone.

I've also become an advocate of using full strength dosage and a full course of treatment. From what I have read, many fishkeepers do half doses or short treatments with meds and like humans have done with antibiotic use, we've created super bugs, super Ich that is not as responsive to medications or any other treatments. I should not blame just the fishkeepers though as even the box on my meds said use half doses for tetras.

I can tell it is morning without my 3 cups of coffee and I'm just rambling here.

 

[mtv8dmarine]

I've also become an advocate of using full strength dosage and a full course of treatment. From what I have read, many fishkeepers do half doses or short treatments with meds and like humans have done with antibiotic use, we've created super bugs, super Ich that is not as responsive to medications or any other treatments. I should not blame just the fishkeepers though as even the box on my meds said use half doses for tetras.

I couldn't agree more. Studies have shown that under-dosing can and has created various levels of immunities. That being said, it's also another decision a keeper must make weighing the pros and cons of a such a decision because all fish are in fact different. Even within the same species.