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Well i bought two rams to add to my community tank, and they both got ich! Help! i have them melafix, took out the carbon in my filter, and gave them ridich, added a little salt, stress coat, anythign else i can do?

Raise temp slowly to about 85. This will cause the ich to fall off and the medications will kill it. Meds won't do anything until the ich falls off the fish.


My Scapes

Melafix doesn't do anything to ich, and you really don't need to add the Stress Coat or salt, either. The more you add to a tank with sick fish, the more stressed those fish get. If it were my tank, I'd stop with the meds, do a couple of water changes over a few days, then start up with just the Ridich.

Raising the tank's temp speeds up the life cycle of the ich parasite, meaning that they get to the 'drop off' stage more quickly. This is the stage in which medicines kill the ich, before it can latch back on to the fish.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

Well i am slowly raising the tank temperature, but it's weird becuase no other fish in the tank have ich. Shall i add ich medecine again after the temperature is higher?

The rams are even worse today! They have even more white spots! I raised the temperature last night to 85 but when i went to bed i turned it back to 80 since i could not monitor it. Today i changed it back to 85 and they are still infected!

Would a salt bath help? How do you perform one?

THEY STILL HAVE ICH!! I really need help, i do not want to loose them. No other fish have seem to contradicted the disease but i still want to help!

I think that to understand how to effectively treat Ich, it would be best if you had a general idea of its life cycle.

When you see the white spots on your fish, it is called trophozoites and as they are under the fish's skin. Once they mature, they fall off the fish into the gravel or on plants and develop a shell around them (sort of like a capsule) and are called trophonts. Thos trophonts will releast the next stage of the life cycle -- tomites -- hundreds to about a thousand of them, who are free swimming. The tomites need to find a new host within two to three days (depends on temperature) and once they found a host the cycle begins again and you see white spots on your fish again, and probably more of them.

The trophozoites and the trophonts are very resistant to medications and the medications are meant to kill the free swimming stage of the ich -- the tomites. This is why it's important to follow the instructions on the medications and not stop once you don't see white spots on your fish. The medications have to be present in the water when the ich is in its free swimming stage to work.

Raising the temperature speeds up the life cycle of the ich. It is not absolutely necessary, but it does help.

The most likely reason why your rams have the ich but no other fish is because the stress they were under as the new addition to your tank (netting at the shop, transporting, new water parameters, new tank mates) and they immune system was weakened by that. Salt won't help a lot in that case. It might help the fish dealing with the parasite, but it won't solve the problem.

You said you have Rid Ich, and that should solve your problem. You should change 25% of the water and then add 1 teaspoon Rid Ich for every 10 gallons of water, and do that on a daily basis (yes, even the water changes) until at least 3 days after the disappearance of the white spots. This should take 6 - 7 days of treatment, but might take more. Raising the temperature as suggested in above posts will help shorten the treatmen time. Make a 40% water change when the treatment has finished.

Hope it helps.

The number of white spots on my rams are drastically decreasing and they no longer are floating in one place with clamped fins! Thanks so much for your help and support! I really appreciate it and so do my fish!

Glad to hear your Rams are doing better.

Great post sirbooks, I agree. If your Rams are new to this setup, drastically changing the water chemistry by adding lots of stuff to the water at one time would stress the fish even more.

If I understand correctly... by raising the temp this would speed up the life cycle of the ich, thus making them fall off the fish faster. Do the meds work only during the free floating stage, when the ich isnt attached to the fish, OR do the meds just work at any stage of its cycle.

Is there any relevence to putting a sheet over the tank, so no light gets in. I've seen a couple tanks at the LFS, when I asked, I was told it helped to cure ich.

---> ADULT (on fish)--->TROPHOZOITE ---> CYST ---> TOMITE ---> ADULT (on fish)

Tomite is the only stage that the ich protozoan is susceptible to medications. Increased temperatures not only speed up the reproduction cycle but temperatures above 90F will interrupt the reproduction cycle as the protozoan is unable to survive in the trophozoite and tomite stages at that temperature level.

The covered tanks in the lfs treat ich by masking it from customers.

Last edited by bob wesolowski at 09-Feb-2005 23:00

__________
"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."
researched from Steven Wright

When you asked for how to do the salt bath, here is what you do- simply make a saltwater mix, pour this into a quarintine tank, release the fish into there for a few minutes, then put it back into the main aquarium, and repeat every few days.

I found esha exit unsurpassable for getting rid of ich if you can find some. Its also equally effective at getting rid of velvet too.