My tank is doomed...

[Snagrio]

Despite all my efforts, all my quarantining, all my careful planning, ich got into my main 125 gallon tank. It's full of snails and live plants so I can't use any sort of medication so I started cranking up the heat and basically have to pray that my months of work and hundreds of dollars worth of fish don't get completely wiped out...

 

[mark4785]

Can you source a hospital tank for the fish and treat them in there? You could perhaps get a 3rd tank for the snails too.

You could then put a Ich treatment into the main tank like Waterlife Protozin which will not kill the plants.

 

[Snagrio]

Can you source a hospital tank for the fish and treat them in there? You could perhaps get a 3rd tank for the snails too.

You could then put a Ich treatment into the main tank like Waterlife Protozin which will not kill the plants.

All I have is a 10 gallon, which would not work for 50+ fish. No other extra tank for snails either.

 

[EllRog]

Heat and daily waterchanges with substrate vacuuming is the best thing for ich anyway. Steer away from the chemicals

 

[mark4785]

All I have is a 10 gallon, which would not work for 50+ fish. No other extra tank for snails either.

I would suggest getting some spare tanks to deal with the situation in the way i mentioned. When you have plants there is always the possibility that they will be carrying some nasty parasites so I think the best thing to do is have temporary holding tank for the snails.

You could actually keep the fish and plants in your main tank and use a standard Ich treatment. Many treatments have no influence on plant health or fish.

 

[Wills]

Don't panic Ich is not too terrible (I know thats easy to say when its not your tank). I've always used Waterlife Protozin and turned the temperature all the way up. Treated for 2 weeks (including a week after I can see the last spot) and its always done me right, I've had some sensitive fish in the tank through this process too and not been a problem. And fish that have been treat from this have gone on to live double digit lives.

It is possible to treat just with heat but I like the medication for an extra level of reassurance.

Wills

 

[Snagrio]

Don't panic Ich is not too terrible (I know thats easy to say when its not your tank). I've always used Waterlife Protozin and turned the temperature all the way up. Treated for 2 weeks (including a week after I can see the last spot) and its always done me right, I've had some sensitive fish in the tank through this process too and not been a problem. And fish that have been treat from this have gone on to live double digit lives.

It is possible to treat just with heat but I like the medication for an extra level of reassurance.

Wills

I do have Seachem Paraguard, but idk if I have enough as I already used half the bottle trying to get rid of ich that was on quarantined fish that went through treatment for an entire month and SOMEHOW wasn't fully eradicated as I've come to find out. I'm convinced I'm dealing with the most resilient ich known to man because this is freaking ridiculous.

 

[Uberhoust]

When restarting the hobby a couple of years ago I had an ich infestation that lasted over a month. I feel your pain. Now I am very careful either quarantine for fish or a bleach dip for the plants.

 

[Snagrio]

I'm genuinely regretting having set up this giant fish tank. It's been disaster after disaster and now everything's on the verge of falling apart. Even as I'm trying to service it with a water change the siphon isn't working properly despite me just yesterday getting a new connection part (previous one was cracked and leaking) so the water is moving at a trickle pace. And I'm discovering corpses that I didn't notice till now due to so many individuals in a massive amount of water (125 gallons specifically).

The heaters aren't warming the water high enough to the recommended level to help combat the parasite despite their settings being at the highest possible (highest I can get it is 81, when it needs to be 85+), and I don't think I even have enough salt or medication (probably only salt because there's mystery snails and live plants involved that could be harmed by what I have) to treat the whole tank since the volume of water is so great.

 

[Snagrio]

Fixed the siphon problem (I need to use a solid hose and not those stretchy ones as they don't add enough pressure), completed the water change, temperature is hovering around 82F and I added a cup's worth of salt while installing a sponge filter both for extra bio filtration plus it adds some extra aeration to compensate for the increase in temperature.

That's about the most I can do for now.

 

[Colin_T]

Are you sure it's white spot?

Insulate the back sides and top of the tank with polystyrene foam sheets so the heaters don't have to work as hard to get the temperature up to 86F.

Alternatively, move shrimp and snails into a bucket of tank water with a few plants, and add copper to the main tank. Leave copper there for 2 weeks then do a 75% water change and gravel clean every day for a week before putting the shrimp and snails back in.

Do you have carbon in the filter?
If yes, that will remove medication and stop it killing the parasites.

Did you add enough medication for the water volume?

has the medication expired?

If you quarantine the new fish properly, white spot should not have appeared in the main display tank.

 

[clambert122]

Despite all my efforts, all my quarantining, all my careful planning, ich got into my main 125 gallon tank. It's full of snails and live plants so I can't use any sort of medication so I started cranking up the heat and basically have to pray that my months of work and hundreds of dollars worth of fish don't get completely wiped out...

I use Ich-X in my tank when I had an outbreak in my 150, and I have both live plants and snails and plecos and cory cats, and all had no issues.

And take some heart. Yes, getting a big tank up and running can certainly be a trial, ( automate as much as possible imo ) once you get it all working smooth, its not much harder than any other tank.

 

[StevenF]

you could get a UV serilizer. Any parpsites floating in the water will get sucked into it and will be killed by the UV. That with the heat tatshould help.

 

[Snagrio]

I ordered some Ich-X as I've read it doesn't harm plants or invertebrates, but it won't get here until Monday and I'm afraid the heat treatment did more damage than the parasite... Woke up this morning to a dead neon tetra and corydoras, and all the neon tetras in general look about ready to keel over as they're all cowering, listless and bloated. All the while I've barely seen signs of the ich (I know they attack the entire body including inside the gills but still). The rest of the fish (black neons, apistogrammas, hatchets, plecos and other cories) and mystery snails seem to be doing okay though.

The plants haven't liked the warmer water either as my java ferns have all turned an ugly shade of brown within just a few days with my vallis are also not looking so good. I've made sure to carefully raise the water temperature but everything basically got boiled anyway. I've set the heaters back to a normal mid 70's range and just have to hope what's left survives until the medication gets here.

 

[Colin_T]

If the fish have white spot, do a huge water change and gravel clean every day until the medication arrives. This will dilute the number of parasites in the tank and there will be fewer to infect the fish. This should buy you some time until the medication arrives.

You can also move the fish into a clean container of water each day for a week and this will help them become free of the parasites. You put the fish in a plastic storage container with some dechlorinated water, a heater and some plastic plants. Each day you move the fish into a new clean container of water and wash and dry the previous container out. The parasites drop off the fish and sit on the bottom of the container. When you move the fish each day, you leave the parasites behind and over the course of a week, the fish become free of parasites. The parasites in the main tank should die off without any fish in there.