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How long does it take, once treatment begins, for the fish to feel better and stop flashing?

It takes a week for the meds to kill the ich. Only after the cycsts have fallen off the fish are the meds able to actually kill it.
A second round of meds is sometimes necessary.

^_^
[hr width='40%']"Somewhere beyond happiness and sadness
I need to calculate,what creates my own madness...
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Medicate for a minimum of 72 hours after the disappearance of the last white spot on you rfish. Preferably up to 7 days afterwards.

What happens is this. Your white spots fall off the fish, then start producing thousands of free swimming larvae called tomites. This is the stage that is vulnerable to medicinal attack. Trouble is, if you stop the meds too soon, these things lurk in your gravel like a time bomb, then release swarms of tomites which then reinfect your fish.

Keep the med levels up for 7 days after the disappearance of the last white spot, and combine this with a temperature setting of 80°F temporarily to speed up the Ich life cycle, and the tomites are all killed. Trouble is, if your aquarium is at the cooler end of the scale, say 70°F, the life cycle takes longer. Which is why Ich dosing uis usually acoompanied by a gradually implemented temperature hike to speed up the Ich life cycle, to get the tomites into the water quickly so that the meds can kill them all.

Follow that procedure and Ich is one-stop curable.

Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002