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today i noticed that one of the rainbowfish in my 55 gal has ick, he had them on his tail, sides of his body and his top fins. so we put him in the "fish hospital" 10 gal tank, he's in there by himself. everything seemed fine, till i came back from work and to my surprise/shock i noticed that my geophagus, both clown loaches and some platys had gotten ICK as well. their ick is not as severe as the rainbowfish' that's in the hospital... what do u think i should do ?? how many fish will die? all of them? just the weak ones? u have no clue? none?? should i salt the tank, if so how?how much salt? should i use fish medication???what kind? raise the temp???

it's a 55 gal, it has corys, tetras, livebearers, loaches, geophageus, killies, and a goby. i know loaches are at risk of dying if i use medication... what would u guys do if u were in my place? medicate or not? wait it out? should i do a water change??? please help. all feedback is welcome

thank u

Deep breath....

It's not unusual for a whole tank to become infected.. it's part of the ick life cycle to drop off and live in your gravel. So, you'll need to treat the whole tank. Seperate the sensative fish from the others (your loaches and anything else "scaleless" + the tetra's). Treat the scaless + small guys seperately with a reduced (half) dose of something like tri-sulfur or maracyn (i think). I can't get maracyn here in Australia, but the US guys seem to swear by it. You can treat the other fish with anything containing methyl blue or the tri-sulfur at the full recommended dose. If you're going to use a multi-cure or something like wardleys "ick-away", make sure you get something with concentration of methyl-blue greater than 2.5%. Otherwise, your wasting time! You might find you need to alternate between two different meds, like tri-sulfur and methyl-blue, until the ick is gone. The ick can build an 'immunity' to some meds.

You need to treat until all signs of ick on the fish are gone, and probably for 3 days afterwards. Do regular 30% water changes every three days while medicating, and remove your active carbon. Treating ick requires strong meds, so it will kill your cycle (good bacteria). That means: take care and closely watch your nitrates, nitrites and ammonia. If they spike, increase the regularity of water changes at a reduced rate (e.g. drop 30% to 10%). Raise the temp slowly in all tanks the infected fish are in to 28degrees C. This speeds up the ick growth rate, and it will drop off the fish sooner. Thats how ick lives.. like a tick. Feeds off the host, drops off to bread and mutate (move to next stage of life cycle) then finds a new host. The meds work best when the ick is off the host.. thats why you increase the temp.

Start adding pure aquarium or sea salt (not table salt as it's iodised), but it won't help much with the current onset of ick. It will help prevent re-infection and upsets the ick's life cycle. If you get aquarium salt, it will have dosage directions on the package. I generally halve their recommendations and be on the safe side.

Good luck! You may lose some tetras... but if you start treating now with tri-sulfur, everything else should be fine.

[span class="edited"][Edited by jester_fu 2004-07-09 01:45][/span]

tnx for trying to help me. we'll do like u said and separate the scale-less fish from the others, and give them a smaller amount of meds. we have rid-ick, and we'll use that to cure it, do u think that would work? or did u even ever hear of it???

I haven't heard of Rid-Ick... but it should list it's ingredients on the package anyway. If it's got methyl-blue in it... which it most likely has, don't use it on your loaches or anything else scale-less. You should be able to get some tri-sulfur tablets from your local fish shop (pet store). Use those. There have been a few posts on this site suggesting copper based medicines (like methyl-blue) react badly with scale less fish. I've only just got my loaches so i don't have any direct experience with them yet. However, i do have some brissle noses, which are scale less, and they don't like being treated with methyl-blue at any dose. Best not to use it for the scale less fish. I've had good success using tri-sulfur, and another guy, Bryce, from the US, swears by the maracyn cure on his loaches... so there are your options. Good luck and keep us posted!

swears by the maracyn cure on his loaches

I believe that is Coppersafe (tm). I've used it before, works great.

Treat for a full week after the last signs.. Meaning 7 days, not 3. Good luck !

The Amazon Nut...

tnx guys,
i separated the loaches and the tetras, i'm treating them with 75% of the recommended dose in the 10 gal.
all the other dudes r in the 55 and they r getting a full dose of rid-ich. on the bottle it said it's ok to use on scale-less fish unless they r totally covered in ich, which means they r over stressed and any additional stress (read: fish medication) would probably be the end of them regardless of what kind it is.


anyway i took out all the live plants i have them in 3 big buckets.. is it ok if i leave them in the tanks that r being treated or was i right to take them out?
you guys think i should medicate them for 7 days or till i see the white spots r gone off of them????

tnx again y'all

Like I mentioned, use your ick med... If it's a 'normal' ick med, use it at half dose if you have scaleless fish.
Follow the directions on the ick med..

Treat until you see no more spots on the fish, (at this point the ick parasite has dropped off the fish, they're in your tank, in the gravel, on the tank walls, decor etc)
Where they will multiply, then re-infect the fish. Do a clean of your tank walls and shallow vac the gravel. (do not deep vac the whole thing as you'll remove alot of beneficial bacteria) Then med your tank for 7 days. If no signs for 7 days after last spots seen. You're done..
Also get your tank temp to 80.

The Amazon Nut...

Maybe good you took the plants out, make sure you give them a couple swishes, then change the water in them a couple times also.. Will knock off any icks that hitch-hiked on the plants.

The Amazon Nut...