Acara with Ich / White Spot deteriorating

[andrej351]

Hey there,

I noticed my Blue Acara developing a white spot infection a few days ago. I began treating as per the sticky in this forum. Over the last few days I have been holding the tank temp at between 30 and 32 degrees celsius and slowly increasing the concentration of salt in the tank.

Today I've noticed the white spots on him have begun to fall off. You can sort of see clumps of them flaking off him, some still hanging on by a thread. BUT he appears to have a deformation forming on his head.

Basically if you were looking at his profile (side on), his head used to be part of a smooth arc from the top of his body down to his upper lip. Now, however, he has a very noticeable dent after his eyes (nostril area?). The skin looks kind of indented and deformed. His profile now drop down suddenly after his eyes and then continues out to his lip, giving him a sort of snout.

His eyes are also looking very cloudy.

I'm further worried by the fact that he didn't take any food this afternoon, unlike the last few days.

Does this ring any bells for anyone?? I'm really concerned and need to know if there's anything I can do immediately. Possibly lowering the temperature to reduce a bit of stress?

Any tips or insights will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Andrej.

 

[aclockworkorange]

Sounds like a secondary bacterial infection from the wounds the ich has opened, making him vulnerable. The catch 22 is that a lot of bacterial infections get worse at higher temps, but if you're treating with higher temps for ich, this is obviously an issue.
You might want to treat with an antibiotic...

 

[andrej351]

Is there any problem combining an antibiotic with the salt??

I remember that article on Ich mentions not combining salt and some treatments...

 

[andrej351]

It's been about a day and he hasn't improved at all.

His white spot looks about the same, but he is still not eating. One of his eyes looks ok, but the other is seriously cloudy and kind of swollen.

I did a water change today and kept the salt constant. Its at a bit over 1 teaspoon / gallon.

Sorry for the low quality pic:

 

[andrej351]

He was dead this morning

Which really does suck as he was beautiful Acara and had a great personality. He'll definitely be missed.

The plan from here is to maintain the salt level (i'll continue to increase it to about 2 teaspoons / gallon) in the tank for the next 10 days at least. I'm under the impression that if there are any free swimming bits of Ich then this will kill them off. Then I will begin to reduce the concentration by doing some small water changes twice weekly.

The remaining fish are a 2 year old Convict and a 6 inch common Pleco. They both appear to still be in good health so the goal is to keep them that way.

Just thought I'd keep anyone who's perused this thread updated. And if anyone has any tips on keeping the remaining fish healthy for this next week or two I'd definitely appreciate it.

Cheers.