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hi guys,about 4 days ago i noticed my daughters green severum had a very mild case of white spotonly like 2 or 3 spots on her pectoral fin,so i put some methylene blue in,at half the dose rate because there is asorted tetras in there and a upside down catfish,so the next day it looked as if it had 99% cleared up(i just thought i was lucky cause i got it early),HOWEVER,today when my lights came on,it has like tripled on her both her pectoral fins and a few spots on her caudal fin aswell,she is the only fish that has it(so far).WHAT SHOULD I DO ,is the parasite ammune to the m/blue,should i switch to the multicure as that has m/blue,m/green and lacriflavine in iti have a number of treatments for this,but im not 100% sure of which 1 to use.ive never had stuborn white spot like this normally the m/blue does the trick.can any1 help me..

Not your week is it Hokese? If you go back to that page that Keith gave you a link to and look for Ich (Ichthyophthirius) I think it will, once again, answer your questions. That is a great site that Keith suggested. Oh and I did a quick search on Methylene blue and found that is it good as a preventative for Ich but not as a cure. http://www.wetwebmedia.com/methblueart.htm Check this article on Methylene blue out. Good luck!

"Talk is cheap. Action can be almost as affordable"

THANX AGAIN,and for posting really fast too.and no is it not my week,its like i cant remember the last time my fish had any problems or sickness,then boom,first popeye,now white spot.so ill have to get the multicure started then,ill let yous know how she goes.oh and once again props to keith for the link...

I am glad I could help. Though you probably read this already in the link Keith gave you, be sure to raise the temperature of the tank to 80 degrees F. It is imperative to get the life cycle of the Ich going faster so you can kill it in the swimming stage. Otherwise you are just wasting medicine. Good luck! and I hope this is the end of your poor luck streak.

"Talk is cheap. Action can be almost as affordable"

yep already done it,but thankyou for reminding me,as soon as i seen she had white spot that was the first thing i done raise the tempas for my bad luck,well what can i sayi can only hope that its temperaryin one other thing,ive often herd people say and ive red it a few times aswell,that white spot because its easy 2 cure,that its not that bad of a parasite,i disagree,i know i would not like to have liitle bugs boring in and out of my skin,and then there offspring attacking me aswell,no wonder the fish get irritatedthe poor little fellas

That info I posted is very usefull. My concern now where is this white spot coming from. I always got a decent dose of it during the colder months, to stop this I started storing my water for one week and since then I have had no infection in the 5ft tank. I did have a small infection in the Betta tank but this came in with 3 Cardinal Tertras I bought at a local LFS.

To make sure it is completly removed continue the tank treatment for at least 2-3 weeks after you have seen the last of the white spot on the infected fish.

Then do a good water change also add some Bio Starter to give the bacteria a good boost.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
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cool,thanx again keith ,i shall do thatim also storing my water for 1 week b4 adding to my tanks,when the treatment is finished should the water be totaly clear(no die left from meds)b4 i add my amtrate down to boost my bacteria back up?and im 99%sure the white spot came from 2 silver sharks my daughter conned me into buying.

Not for this time, but next time if this happens give Protozin a try. Its a bit on the exxy side, but its brilliant stuff, easy on tetras (I used it full strength on CLs)and doesn't stuff your biofilter.

With the multicure, it is most effective when you have very little organic matter in the tank. If its full of driftwood or mulm or the like you'll be losing effectiveness (not so much the strength, but the duration) so if the white spot lasts longer than it should, consider ajusting the dose to compensate for the next round.

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

The key facts to remember about White Spot (and I'm sure Keith has covered these, but I'll repeat them just in case) are:

[1] Only one part of the life cycle of Ichthyophthirius multifiliis, the causative parasite, is usceptible to medication, which means that ...

[2] Medication has to be applied even when the symptoms appear to have gone for up to 7 days afterwards, to make sure that all the susceptible stages of the parasite have been eliminated.

The parasite in question has a three stage life cycle. The part that manifests itself is the trophont or feeding stage. This stage burrows through the fish's slime coat, attaches itself to the outer layer of tissue or epithelium, and starts feeding upon the fish. This stage is impervious to medication because it forms a protective cyst around itself.

The next stage is the tomont stage. This forms when the parasite has ingested sufficient nutrients from the fish to begin reproduction. This stage is largely invisible in the aquarium, because it detaches from the fish, falls into the substrate, and remains encysted while it divides into daughter cells - something like 1,000 daughter cells for each tomont. Because it is encysted, it is impervious to medication again.

The third stage is the larval or tomite stage. Each daughter cell becomes a free swimming tomite, which is microscopic and invisible to the eye. At this point in the life cycle, the parasite is vulnerable to medication. The trouble is, of course, that the swarming tomites are microscopic, and so you can't actually see them directly with the naked eye, which means you have to keep medication levels in the aquarium maintained at sufficient concentration to kill the tomites for as long as they are likely to persist. Depending upon temperature, the tomites could mutate into mature trophonts in as little as 3 days or take as long as 7 days.

In an aquarium that contains solely Labyrinth Fishes, one means of dealing with the parasite is to increase the ambient aquarium temperature to 85 degrees Fahrenheit during the medication stage. This speeds up the parasite's life cycle, and ensures that the medication can destroy all the free-swimming microscopic tomites before they have a chance to attach themselves to a fish and begin the cycle anew. With NON Labyrinth Fishes, however, this could induce unwanted additional respiratory stresses - Labyrinth Fishes can cope with this because they are able to breathe atmospheric air to compensate for the lower concentration of dissolved oxygen at higher water temperatures, but fishes that rely exclusively upon gill-based respiration cannot do this. Some fishes such as Clown Loaches can be subjected to elevated temperatures as they experience these in the wild periodically, but it's not a good idea to do this with certain other fishes - Panda Corys spring to mind as one species that should NOT be subject to temperatures above 80 degrees F because they're inhabitants of cooler waters in their native Peru, and will die of heat stress if 'cooked' in this manner.

So, depending upon ambient temperature, the tomites will appear in as little as 3 days, or you could be unfortunate and the tomites could take 7 days to appear. In cooler aquaria (e.g., a Panda Cory aquarium kept at 72 degrees F) you could be required to maintain medication for up to 14 days.

If the fishes can be moved to a hospital tank for treatment, and medicated there, this is preferable because you don't have to subject your main aquarium's biological filter to adverse effects from the medication - you can just destroy the parasites there. Removing the fishes from the main aquarium also has the advantage that any free swimming tomites that arise in the main aquarium are left with no hosts to attach to, and thus starve to death. So, at the end of your medication period in the hospital aquarium, you are free to return the fishes to the main aquarium. Of course, your problem here is that you have to remember to add a small quantity of fish food to the main aquarium as if you were still feeding fishes so that the biological filter in the main aquarium is kept ticking over whilst the fishes themselves are temporarily rehoused. Once the fishes have been removed from the main aquarium, by the way, you can speed things up vis-a-vis destroying remaining parasites by increasing the temperature to 105 degrees F while the fishes are absent, which will speed up the life cycle considerably, and result in the accelerated production of tomites ... which then find themselves bereft of fishes to attach to. And, they starve to death quicker at the higher temperatures, because they use up their reserves more quickly.

Get yourself a cheap plastic aquarium that you're never going to use as anything BUT a hospital tank, put your fishes in that, medicate them, then whack up the main aquarium temperature to 105 degrees while the fishes are in the 'hospital'. Once the fishes are free of parasites and have remained so for 7 days, you can return the main aquarium to its normal temperature and reintroduce the now treated fishes. Any watertight container that is safe to house fishes in (i.e., it hasn't ever been used to mix weedkiller or insecticide, and doesn't leach toxic material into the water) can be pressed into service as the 'hospital' for the duration, so long as it is possible to maintain aeration and some basic filtration (e.g., sponge filter) within the container during the medication phase.

Oh, and DO NOT use activated carbon filtration or ion exchange resins in the hospital aquarium because that will remove your medication!

EDIT : Almost forgot. I use Protozin. Protozin is somewhat expensive, but it is claimed by the makers to be formulated so as to impact as little as possible upon filter bacteria. And, upon the occasions I have had to use it, it works well.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

That is an excellent add on to the posting I made I hope many members copy that for future reference.

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info

Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
VOTE NOW VOTE NOW

now that is what i call good infoand yes i will be getting some protozinand today its like shaazzamthe white spot is gone,no joke there is not 1 white spot left on her,ofcourse i will keep adding multicure,man it feels good when your fishes get back to normal from a sicknessand once again,THANX TO EVERYONE FOR THE GREAT HELP AND INFO

ps,i do have a qt tank,but at the moment,im repairing 3 small convicts for a freind whos texas gave them a beating,but thanx for reminding me,is this ok for a hospital,its a 10 gal plastic,with a small internal filter,its always served me well...

Provided the fishes only endy up staying in there on a temporary basis, a 10 is OK ... but if you're going to keep big, aggressive Cichlids as your main fishes, you might want to look at something bigger as a hospital aquarium for the future - a big Dempsey won't be happy being stuck in a 10 even if it's only for 14 days for White Spot treatment purposes. As for some of the other Cichlids I've seen people keep, well a Jaguar Cichlid won't FIT in a 10 - I've seen a 13 inch male that would regard a 10 as a torture cage from the Hanoi Hilton, that fish will need something nearer a 40 gallon tank just for hospital purposes ... his regular home is a whopping 10 foot affair so you can imagine how he'd take to being stuck in a 29, let alone a 10!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

yeah i know,its just about the only thing i dont have yet,(a larger qt tank)and i redosed my tank with the multicure,and i think the whitespot is all gone the female severum is looking great again,its amazing when you have the rite advice with the rite meds,how fast you can get rid of a parasite/sickness,at first the methylene done just about nothing(very disapointed in this product,and the advice to use it from my lfs)them ,i switched to the mulitcure and shazzam,its gone.

The methylene blue would have done the trick, but it takes time. Chances are when you added the other med, the methylene blue had already killed off a fair number of swarmers, and your additional med nuked any remaining swarmers.

Plus, the part of the life cycle that the meds kill is the invisible microscopic stage. When the cysts fall off the fish, they lie ticking away like a time bomb generating swarmers, and are impervious to meds during that time. Only once the swarmers make their way into the water can you kill the parasite.

Don't forget to keep medicating for at least 7 days after the disappearance of the last white spot from the fish, and if your aquarium temperature is fairly cool, make that 14 days.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

We've just had a bad case if Ick in 8 out of our 11 African Lake Cichlid tanks, we tried the Aquarium brand treatment and this was completely useless.
We have discovered Ick Guard by Jungle products and it is BRILLIANT - 48 hours and its gone
As this product is not available at LFS in the UK we got a large bottle off ebay that treats 600 gallons, for this size bottle it comes in a granular form but smaller bottles apparently come as tablets - even after treating all our tanks we've only used about a third of the bottle.
So anyone that's got the Ick try it out I highly recommend it.

I use Kent Marine RX-P for ich.
Its probably the best and safest med out there
for all fish and safe for inverts too.
It works for both fresh and saltwater, is safe
for most inverts except sea cukes and slugs,
and works on sensitive scaleless fish like
loaches and plecos and the like. And, best of all,
its all natural!
I would never use anything else again.
I definitely wouldnt use salt myself, as I tried that the first time I ever got ich and lost a group of 8 cory cats in one night.
So yeah, I recommend Kent Marine RX-P.
Its safe, it works, its all natural, its safe for sensitive fish and both fresh and salt water.


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oh ok,but it didnt really seem to do much for my blue acara ether(for the popeye,but after switching to the mulitcure,shes fine)yeah ive kept up the treatment and so far its all good,no more whitespothowever,even thoo i used it at half the dose rate,and its still knocked the tetras around a bit,they are ok still eating ,but i can see they are different,it mite sound funny,but i know my fish,anyway,should i bring my temp back down to normall now, or wait untill i stop adding medsthanx guys

ps,ill get some protozin,or something that dosent trash my bio filter,and is a bit easyer on the tetras./:'

Keep medicating for up to 7 days after the disappearance of the last cyst on the side of your fishes - this is at around 80 degrees F. At a lower temperature (say 74), then you will be looking at 14 days.

For quarantine and hospital purposes, an actual aquarium is nice (so you can observe the fishes as they recover) but if you're looking for something that will hold a decent volume of water for large fishes and won't cost an arm or a leg, then any reasonable sized rectangular container which won't leach unpleasant nasties into the water can be pressed into service. Of course, if you press into service an item such as an old water tank (certified safe for human water use) then you will have to net the fishes and examine them in a separate container to check their health, but the plus side of using something like that is that you would have a LARGE water volume to play with (here in the UK, loft water tanks for human water supplies in the house are 3 foot cubes, at least mine is, so that's over 750 litres of water - you would only have to half fill it to use it as a hospital space for your Cichlids!).


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Usually one medicates the main tank in cases of ich.
If you dont kill the ich in your main tank,
it will just keep coming back.
While yes, it is good to have a hospital tank,
in this case, I would medicate the main tank.


Come Play Yahtzee With Me!
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Well, medicating the main aquarium would make sense in some respects, because that's where the parasite usually first manifests itself. However, my understanding is that if the fishes are transferred to a hospital aquarium, medicated there, and the main aquarium, now devoid of fishes, is raised to a temperature of 105 degrees F for the duration of the medication phase of the fishes, this will guarantee destruction of the parasite. The parastie has a life cycle whose speed of transition from one phase to another is dependent upon temperature, and so, raising the temperature to 105 degrees F forces the parasite to develop at a faster rate. Consequently, the swarmer stages appear earlier, and 'burn out' faster. If the swarmers do not attach to a fish and begin parasitic feeding before their internal reserves run out, they die. Speeding up the life cycle in the absence of fishes so that the swarmer stages appear more quickly, and use up their reserves more quickly, usually suffices. Especially if the fishes in the hospital tank are only being kept at 80 degrees F, a tamperature at which the life cycle of the parasite proceeds twice as slowly and which is being dealt with by medication.

The point here being that use of a medication in the hospital tank has fewer restrictions than use of a medication in the main aquarium - consequently, one can use a copper based med in the hospital tank where one might not be able to use one in the main aquarium because, for example, the main aquarium also houses ornamental Neocaridina shrimps that the copper based medication will kill as swiftly as it will kill the disease. Of course, the ornamental shrimps will have to be rehoused also while the main aquarium is being 'cooked' as it were, but otherwise the basic principle is the same.

So, factoring in the time it takes for the cysts to fall from the affected fishes once discovered and transferred to the hospital aquarium (at 80 degrees this could be 1 to 3 days), the 2 days or so spent developing swarmers, and the 3-4 days after that, during which the swarmers are being medicated in the hospital aquarium, that's a total of 9 days in the hospital aquarium, during which any swarmers in the main aquarium have, if the temperature is raised to 105 degrees F, well and truly used up their reserves and died from lack of a fish to attach to. Swarmers that do not attach to a fish before their reserves run out die full stop.

One way in which you can establish this for yourself, incidentally, and if you have access to the requsiite equipment, is to watch teh swarmers under the microscope dying off as they reach the limit of their reserves. To do this requires some expensive equipment, but if you have access to a college lab, it makes a nice project for anyone studying biology. Keep a culture of the White Spot organisms running in a temperature controlled container under observation using a phase contrast microscope (which allows direct observation of living micro-organisms at vastly enhanced contrast of the kind that can only be obtained using staining of dead tissue with a conventional microscope). This project is probably slightly beyond the reach of the interested amateur because of the need for a phase contrast microscope, though it's possible to obtain the parts to convert a conventional student microscope to phase contrast operation if you don't mind spending a small fortune on the parts ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002