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i've had ick in my tank for about a week now and only my bleeding heart tetras have it. the thing is, one of my buenos aires tetras fins are all ripped up and torn up and it's gills are inflamed and it looks like it's breathing real heavy. i have a few of them and this is the only one that is like this. could this be related to the ick? i've been treating with salt and raised temps for about a week.

i have a fully cycled 46 gallon tank, nitrite is 0, nitrate is 20.

thanks!

Sounds like what you are looking at is a fish with a bacterial infection that is getting harassed by the others, or a fish with a bacterial infection that also has fin rot. You need to remove said fish and treat him seperately, the warmer water is not helping his problems at all....

Unless you may have mistaken ich for velvet, sometimes velvet causes spots too, although they tend to be more yellow in colour than the very white ich parasites.Velvet is far more likely to cause peeling than whitespot Id definately check out the fungus or finrot issue though, as whitespot can reduce immunity, and that will lead to other infections sometimes..

I agree are you sure it was Ich did you get it checked by someone who new what they were saying and doing.

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Sometimes warming up a tank can accelerate the immune system of a fish, but if a parasite is the cause of the problem you may only double or treble its reproduction, and this can lead to a massive infection.

Generally its better only to up the temperatures AFTER the correct medication has gone in, not before. This will speed up the reproductive cycle of the parasite, thusly ending its life quicker, and forcing it to breed. Hopefully the effect of this is that you need less medication to cure the problem , since you will catch the next generation of parasite quicker, and the initial infecting parasites will come to an end that much faster, but unless the meds are in, youll only be advancing the infection on the fish because theres no chemical to stop the second generation of parasite from reinfesting the fish .Many parasites can reproduce geometrically, one reproduction producing literally thousands of new parasites in a single cyst. In short the infection can go from minimal to totally outrageous in as little as 2- 4 days if the temps have been upped to the 80's without the use of meds.

Upping temperatures without meds is only a successful curative technique if the infectious agent cannot survive in these temperatures and the fish can ( rare) , or the parasite or bacteria requires an intermediary host and cannot reproduce without it, and none happen to be available, so the higher temps will finish their life cycle early, thus limiting the damage they do to fish.
Basically upping the temps is only successful in very peripheral infections, or with the use of meds.

On average, dropping light levels may actually be more commonly useful than upping temperatures, as many fungal infections, protozoan, and sporazoan infections can boost their growth through at least partial photosynthesis. The lower light levels also commonly reduce stress in most species of fish.

Last edited by longhairedgit at 14-Dec-2005 06:40