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unfortunatly I've had an outbreak of ichin my comunity tank. The poor fish are riddled with it but I'm treating it with costapur. However the night before last 8 of my cardinal tetras died and last night my favourate fish a dwarf ram went belly up. so my question is are my fish dying of ich or is something else killing them.

Yes, Ich can kill, especially if it gets into the gills.

Can you provide us with tank info (size, filtration, etc), and water parameters?

When fish start to die like that, it is always important to know where the following are at:

Ammonia:
Nitrite:
Nitrate:
pH:
Temp:

Ich can be brought on easily if fish are chilled or stressed. When you do water changes, you can avoid bringing on ich by making sure replacement water is within a degree or two of the original tank temp (fingers are lousy testers).

Also, the ich med, if it contains formalin or formaldehyde can be deadly, if the tank is really hot. More oxygen needs to be in the tank. A few extra airstones can bring more water in contact with the surface by circulating it. Infections also come along with ich. Melafix is a good choice to prevent infection, as is even a small amount of predissolved aquarium salt. If you have any scaleless fish like cories, plecs, otos, then I wouldn't go more than 1/3 dose. Predissolve it, then dribble it in throughout the day to gradually increase salinity. This will help replace lost electrolytes.

Let's start there.

[span class="edited"][Edited by Cory_Di 2004-07-15 09:41][/span]

it's a 25gal tank with an under gravel filtration. The pH is about 7.5-7.8, the temp is 26-27 degrees c and nitrate, nitrite and amonia are all very low. the inhabitants at the mo are 2 pearl gouramies, one dwarf gourami, one serpae tetra, two cardinal tetras and a pinapple plec. the cardinals are covered in what looks like ich, the gouramies show slight signs and the serpae and plec don't show anything at all. I just hope that ich is the only thing wrong as none of the dead tetras showed signs of ich

Get us those parameter readings. I need numbers. "almost normal" is not the same as zero. Ammonia and nitrite should always be zero in a healthy, well-balanced tank, that is filtered good and not overstocked.

Also, how big are these pearl gourami's. That tank is destined for problems with that stock list. The pearls want to be in a larger tank.

I just read up on Costapur. There is iodure of potassium (not sure what that is yet) and Malachite Green. The malachite can harm some fishes, so if you have any of the sensitive species, especially scaleless/catfish, loaches, plecs, etc, you may want to treat at half strength, otherwise, the med can kill them too.

It may be a matter of seeing who can weather the storm. The malachite green will kill off parasites in the freeswimming stage. When you see them on the fish, they are not affected by the meds that much. Rather it is when tehy drop to the tank bottom, then form freeswimming little guys. Then the med gets them. This means making sure the med is in the tank long enough. And, keeping an eye on ammonia and nitrite.

[span class="edited"][Edited by Cory_Di 2004-07-15 18:01][/span]