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anyone used the med - WS3 White Spot Cure. It's boasting that it can actually kill the parasites when in the fish

I would be skeptical of anything like this, as far as I know there is currently no medication capable of killing the ich parasite while it is attached to the host. I could be wrong but I would at least look into it further if I were you.

Well, Stallion, we were all too concerned about the immediate problem rather than the underlying things that can help/hurt it.

Sometimes we just have to see the forest through the trees!!!

Have a good night/day

Good point Rasb. I neglect to say extra O2 as I run airstones in all my tanks. Most medications deprives O2 in your water. Sorry I did not mention that.

Stallion, I very much respect your opinion, and if those methods worked for you that is great. But salt only seemed to make my clown loach ich problem worse.

Increasing the temp of the tank reduces oxygen. So, if using this method we must remind folks that an airstone or two is a MUST when treating with heat. It is also a must when treating with meds like Rid Ich or myriad other meds.

I honestly believe that adding the airstones during my treatment of ich helped speed up the healing process immensely. As a result, I have airstones and bubblewands in both my tanks now. And the tanks are very healthy, save for a transient snail problem.

Just don't use treatment. Folks its not that hard. Stressed fish get ICK. Salts and sometimes Melafivisible wounds) are all you need. Raise the temps turn out the lights(like the last post said). Keep your fish under the least stress as possible. Water conditions are a must(although I've pesonally seen Discus thrive in over 300ppm NitrAtes before,I'm still trying to comprehend that.) Just use 1 TBLS of Aqua salt per 4/5gal's of H2O. Shut the lights off/minimal feeding and you will be back on track in 5-10 days.I recently had a bout with my 5 CL's(had over 9 months now). Its all in the stress coat peeps. Healthy/happy fish = no ICK , even if you might "introduce" it to the tank. Help the fish beat it themselves.

The length of treatment after spots have fallen off has been argued over a lot, generally it's anywhere between 0 days to 10! I personally like to use a bit of sense when it comes to that question and think about it for a few minutes. The speed of the life cycle of the ich parasite is highly dependant on temperature. In a cold water tank I would think that you would want to treat a bit longer to be absolutely sure that all of the parasites have been eradicated in their vulnerable state. In warmer temperatures you won't want to treat as long because the life cycle of the parasite is shorter, for one, and you should have all of it killed in a relatively short period of time. Also, many ich medications have higher toxicity in higher temperatures because of a lack of dissolved O2 so the length of treatment is best minimized.

As long as the fish are responding well to treatment and you have a fairly *normal* temperature for a tropical tank, I would continue treatment to 4-5 days. If you have raised the temperature of the tank over about 84 F or so, you may want to decrease the length of continued treatment to 3-4 days, depending on how your fish are reacting to it. I've had fish that get really fussy during ich treatment, clamped fins and sulky depressed attitudes, while others seem to hardly notice at all.

After the treatment with rid ich has been stopped, your fish will still have open sores from the parasite that you may or may not be able to see. IME it's a good precautionary measure to treat with something like melafix, pimafix or a combination of both to prevent columnaris infection. I can't tell you how many times I've seen columnaris show up right after ich! The reason is because the treatment for ich stresses the fish out, they don't have the normal defences they would normally have to combat infection. Combine that with the open sores left by the ich parasite itself and you can see where this is headed. If you can't get pimafix and/or melafix for some reason (and even if you can) it's really important to keep the water as clean as possible (you may want to continue 25% PWC every 2-3 days for about a week after stopping rid ich). When you stop treatment with the rid ich, run some activated carbon in your filter for a day or so to pull the rest of the medication, I would do this before adding melafix and/or pimafix. After I started going by that regimen after the spots fall off - ich meds for about 4 days, carbon for 1 day, pima/melafix for 7 days (with a lot of PWCs in between) - I haven't seen columnaris in the fish I've treated for ich.

My clown loach along with my Rainbow Boesmani had ick really bad last month and I managed to save them and so far, fingers crossed, I have seen no signs of it returning.

What I did was the following:
-Raised the Temperature of the tank to 83° F
-Left the lights off all the time except for one hour in the evening for feeding and exercise
-Cut down on my feeding to once daily with smaller portions
-Removed the carbon from my filter
-Added 1 TBSP of aquarium per 10 gallon of water.
-Put a blanket over the aquarium
-Used Quick Cure (one drop per gallon) every day for three days and then did a 50% water change and started again
-Repeated until the fish were visibily healed of their spots and then treated for another six days afterwards.

Remember that when you do a water change to put back 50% of the salt.

I was told that quick cure might be harmful to the loaches, but I have yet to see any effects.

Hi @ll,
Thanks for all the posts. I think I have finally got the ich under control - 2 loaches have no white spots, and no.3 has just a few. How long do you think I should continue to treat after all the visible signs have gone.

The treatment i'm using is Rid-ich.

Thanks,
Achilles

UK Betta seller -
www.bramsbettas.com

DO NOT USE COPPERSAFE IF YOU ARE USING A WATER CONDITIONER SUCH AS AQUA PLUS.

The Coppersafe will not work as the water conditioner may neutralize it. I treated for weeks and found out that's why the coppersafe was not working.

Stick with Ich Guard II. After weeks of CopperSafe, the Ich Guard II took care of the problem with visible results in only two days. There would still be copper in your water, however, if you did treat with coppersafe and even if you did use the water conditioner. So you'd need to remove copper before adding any other medication. I used a polyfilter for medication removal.

If you want a real education about clown loaches and ich, try to locate my saga back in February in the hospital section. It has well over 100 posts. Thanks to some fine detective work by some wonderful members here, I was able to get through almost a month of ick with no clown loach fatalities.

Most important advice: DO NOT MIX MEDICATIONS

Hi @ll,
And here I go again. I have just bought a 100 Litre (about 35 US gallons I think) from a close friend which came with a number of fish, one which was a clown loach. Read up on these little beauties and found they like a few playmates.
So of i trotted to my local store and bought me a few more loaches.
This was on Sunday 10th, and now I'm facing white spot again (had a small 5 gallon starter kit).
The fish had been with my friend for over two years and I even kept the water(a right hassle:%))

Please help
Achilles

ammonia: 0
nitrIte: 0
NitrAte: 7-10 (25% water chage every day for last 2 weeks)
ph 7.4
temp 82f

UK Betta seller -
www.bramsbettas.com

Yes for sensetive fish I can do a drip for up to 24 hours if the ph is a big difference. I do this buy puting them into a 5 gallon bucket. 6hours is my averedge time. Oh and for Rid-Ich I recomend half doses for scaleless fish.

I actually think that is too long, i keep the bag closed and floating for 15mins then open it and add some tank water to the bag, wait another 15mins and then net them and add them to the tank.

They can actually stress out from staying in the bag for too long aswell so just a thought

Hi,
anyone used the med - WS3 White Spot Cure. It's boasting that it can actually kill the parasites when in the fish


achilles

UK Betta seller -
www.bramsbettas.com

Hi hasi,
Thanks for the response. The rid-ich med says it is non-lethal to the scaleless fish, so I tink I'm okay. My tank is always at 82' celsius - my friend had the fish at this temp for two years or so, so I thought it would be a bad idea to turn it down after such a period of time.
I hope I can save these critters, they bring my tank alive .
Does anyone take longer than an hour when introducing new fish??
Is this rid-ich med any good or should I be looking to buy the quick cure??

Many thanks
Achilles

UK Betta seller -
www.bramsbettas.com

Be careful with Clown loaches as they are a scaleless fish like your pleco and most meds recommend using HALF the recommended dosage so just read over the directions on the med.

I prefer to use heat treatment, raising the temperature 30-32 degrees celsius - increasing the temp at 1-2 degrees every 6 hours. Keep temperature at 30 or more for atleast 3 days after last sign of ich.

There is also the option of adding salt so do a google search and you will come across many articles on fighting ich.

Goodluck HTH

Hi little_fish,
I'm on using rid-ich at the moment - heard it was one of the better ones. At the moment there is a male betta, 4 white cloud minnows and a whiptail catfish with the 3 loaches.
The LFS ph theory sounds a likely one. I of course try and introduce the fish to the new tank - this lasts for about an hour. I basically let the bag float in the tank for 1/2 an hour, then the for another 1/2 an hour I add a small amount of my tank water to the bag at 5 minute intervals. I got this technique from a handbook that came with my first tank (still a newbie)
How long does your introduction last.
There is about 12 spots on each of the loaches this morning. I spotted it last night after work (they were not there on the morning).

Thanks for your time,
Achilles

UK Betta seller -
www.bramsbettas.com

Achilles,

First off, your Clown Loaches can reach a size of over 10” (25cm). This means that they will not be happy in your tank in the long run. Your tank is actually only 26 USG. At some point, you will need a bigger home for them.

Regarding the Ich, they might have been under a lot of stress when you bought them (they for sure were). In addition, your ph of 7.4 is in the upper range of tolerable values for this fish, given the profile of it here on FP is correct. If the LFS water has a lower ph and you put them in your tank too fast, that stresses them out even more.

As to what to do, I strongly recommend using Quick Cure. BUT, only if there is more than just 1 or 2 white grains on your fish. Ich in a very small number might just disappear because it is too little in numbers to find a new host.

Hope this helps,

Ingo

PS: What other fish are in the tank now?

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