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Ugh - so I just went on vacation for a week over the holidays. About a 2 days before I am to come home, the house sitter calls to tell me my fish are dying from Ick! I made sure not to add anything for a couple of weeks before I left just to be sure nobody would have ick, but I guess I didn't wait long enough.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I got home last night to find several of my plants in VERY bad shape (it was the high light plants so I need better lighting and I am arranging that now) and I was looking at the tanks and what do I see but a stinking SNAIL crawling along the glass. I couldn't get a good enough look to ID him, but I never had a snail before.

So far, the ick has claimed 4 cardinal tetras, all 5 of my red phantoms, 1 of my black neons and 3 of my purple neons. The silvertips are just fine, ny BN pleco and my marble pleco are fine and the blue wood shrimp is fine.

The remaining cardinals and some of the black neons are COVERED with ick even after 3 days of treatment so I am going to do a 50% WC today and continue treating.

Once the tank is healty again, I'll worry about the snail and as mentioned before, I have the plant situation under control.

Man, what a nightmare. I suppose it *could* have been worse. Over half of my stock survived.

coffeeman,

Sorry to hear about your nightmare.

I am curious as to why Ich broke out in your tank. Most commonly a major shift in temperature can cause Ich (don't ask me why, that is just what I hear and observe in the LFS). I don't know where you live, but could it be that it got cold or hot in your absence? Or did you maybe have a power outage (which might also explain why the plants are in bad shape, besides weak light)?

About the snails: In my optinion snails will find a way in your tank if you are not super super careful when adding plants. Drastic treatments are required to make sure that all eggs and snails on new plants are killed off before the plants are added to the tank. I for one prefer some snails over a bleach bath for my plants. As long as they don't take over the tank, of course .

Ingo

Last edited by LITTLE_FISH at 01-Jan-2006 17:48

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Yeah, I'm not terribly worried about the snail (if there's only the one. I can't find him today).

I don't see any evidence of a power outage (e.g. my VCR is not flashing )and the temp was pretty normal for our area diring vacation. The house sitter said she monitored the tank temps and they were stable.

I did tell her not to feed the fish though, so I wonder if there was just enough ick cysts in the tank that their immune systems could figt keep the infestation at bay but when they started going without food they got weaker and were unable to fight it.

Ah well, at this point it's really academic. I was already in the process of setting up a quarantine tank (since eventaully I will have some expensive fish) so I'll just keep working on that and that should keep me ick free in the future.

I would take the plants out of the tank while treating for ICH. As for the snails, I discovered accidentally that Algone - a SERA product to kill algae - works wonders at making all the snails come out. All you have to do is to pick them up as they crawl up the side glass. Like LITTLEFISH said, you'll get snails in almost all your plant bundles you get at the LFS. Just be very careful when undoing the bundle and check for snails there.

Hope that helps and sorry for your losses. Who needs that BS at x-mas time.

Sponge