And I thought warmer water was supposed to kill whitespot!

[duanes]

It usually takes at least 2 weeks to kill all the ick (sometimes longer).
The UV will only kill the young ick that pass the it, and then only if they spend enough time under the light in the chamber to ruin their organelles. If the flow thru the UV is a few seconds too fast, they will not be killed.
A quarantine will not work once you have a fish in the tank with ick, because once its on one fish in the tank, its in the tank, some ick are dormant in the substrate. Heat only speeds up the life cycle, it does not kill them.
You need to change the osmotic pressure of the water enough (with meds, or salt (at least 3ppt)) to crush the newly hatching ick, as they hatch off the fish, or from the substrate. Vacuuming and tossing the old water helps to get rid of some of the ick.
The dormant cysts in the substrate are also immune to treatment, it is only when the emerge from the dormant state, they the osmotic pressure kills them.

 

[duanes]

Another problem I find with using heat, is (after the ick hatch off the fish) there are tiny lesions where the protozoa have dug into the fish, and these can be prone to infection from bacteria, at higher temps. At high temps many bacteria become more virulent, and secondary bacterial infection can be the result.
In the lab when I worked as a microbiologist, we incubated cultures of pathogenic bacteria at tempts between 95'F and 99'F to get best results.
I cured the fish below of ick using only rock salt at 3ppt, no extra heat.

one week + later below

 

[twentyleagues]

twentyleagues , I wish I had a quarantine tank, but there is no more space in my house, no matter how much I move stuff around. The disease has only been present for 3 days, not 2 weeks. The whitespot seems to be getting worse. Should I be worried or is the high temp speeding up the life cycle?

High temp will speed up its life cycle. Use the meds you have to kill it.

 

[skjl47]

The disease has only been present for 3 days, not 2 weeks. The whitespot seems to be getting worse. Should I be worried or is the high temp speeding up the life cycle?

Hello; First the higher temp is speeding up the life cycle. This is a good thing but only if you have some sort of medication already present in the water to kill the newly hatching ich. That you are getting more new spots seems to indicate you do not have medication in the water or that maybe not enough medication.
A few threads ago about ich a member eventually told us that she had almost enough salt in the water but did not add the full amount because she loved her fish and was afraid that much salt might be harmful. Did not make sense to me then and still does not.

It usually takes at least 2 weeks to kill all the ick (sometimes longer).

A quarantine will not work once you have a fish in the tank with ick, because once its on one fish in the tank, its in the tank,

some ick are dormant in the substrate. Heat only speeds up the life cycle, it does not kill them.

need to change the osmotic pressure of the water enough (with meds, or salt (at least 3ppt)) to crush the newly hatching ick

dormant cysts in the substrate are also immune to treatment, it is only when the emerge from the dormant state, they the osmotic pressure kills them.

Hello; These quotes from duanes lay it out well. I can only add that after the last visible spot is seen you should continue the treatment for a good while. My take is closer to ten days so that all eggs in the tank can hatch out.
Also do not use more than one sort of mediation at the same time.
Good luck

 

[Matteus]

Hello; First the higher temp is speeding up the life cycle. This is a good thing but only if you have some sort of medication already present in the water to kill the newly hatching ich. That you are getting more new spots seems to indicate you do not have medication in the water or that maybe not enough medication.
A few threads ago about ich a member eventually told us that she had almost enough salt in the water but did not add the full amount because she loved her fish and was afraid that much salt might be harmful. Did not make sense to me then and still does not.











Hello; These quotes from duanes lay it out well. I can only add that after the last visible spot is seen you should continue the treatment for a good while. My take is closer to ten days so that all eggs in the tank can hatch out.
Also do not use more than one sort of mediation at the same time.
Good luck

Hello, would salt and paragaurd count as 2 meds or will that be ok to mix? One thing that I often hear about the temp rising is that the spots get much worse just before they get better. This was my experience last time I had an outbreak

 

[cinderellaterra]

This is not your average case of whitespot
I have 6 clown loaches, 3 with whitespot Here is where it gets tricky : The water temperature in the tank is 31 degrees . I thought that was supposed to kill whitespot. Apparently not. I cannot think of anything that could have stressed them, maybe new fish introduced it? In any case, should I use medication or let the temp do its job? Please help!

 

[cinderellaterra]

That 90 is scary and probably extreamly stressful on fish 2 weeks of rising and lowering the temp. So much easier to qt your fish treat the qted fish and your good. But elevating the temp to mid 80s to accelerate the lifecycle and use a good med should cut down on stress and eliminate the issue within a week (7-10 days).

Straight up I increased temp for 10 days , without results , medicated and was gone in 4 days. Small tank, air stone heater follow instructions and you will save your lovely loaches a lot of suffering .

 

[twentyleagues]

It usually takes at least 2 weeks to kill all the ick (sometimes longer).
The UV will only kill the young ick that pass the it, and then only if they spend enough time under the light in the chamber to ruin their organelles. If the flow thru the UV is a few seconds too fast, they will not be killed.
A quarantine will not work once you have a fish in the tank with ick, because once its on one fish in the tank, its in the tank, some ick are dormant in the substrate. Heat only speeds up the life cycle, it does not kill them.
You need to change the osmotic pressure of the water enough (with meds, or salt (at least 3ppt)) to crush the newly hatching ick, as they hatch off the fish, or from the substrate. Vacuuming and tossing the old water helps to get rid of some of the ick.
The dormant cysts in the substrate are also immune to treatment, it is only when the emerge from the dormant state, they the osmotic pressure kills them.

Agreed uv only works on ich if it super high concentration. You'd need a huge uv to properly treat most tanks for ich. It takes 300,000uws to kill ich. That combines light out put and time the water has in contact with the light. Slower flow is better but then less water is being treated.
Oh Yeah qt only works when you do it first. If you put an infected fish in your dt qting after the fact doesnt work, the rest of your dt is already infected.

 

[twentyleagues]

Hello, would salt and paragaurd count as 2 meds or will that be ok to mix? One thing that I often hear about the temp rising is that the spots get much worse just before they get better. This was my experience last time I had an outbreak

Paraguard will kill ich use it as directed. I don't know if I'd mix the two. A little salt can actually help keep bacterial infections down in the wounds left by the parasite dropping off. Use the two at your risk. Keep the elevated temp to increase life cycle.

 

[skjl47]

Hello; It is my understanding that some of the ick medications work in the same manner as salt, which is by osmotic pressure difference. This is one reason why I suggest to not use two medications together.
I do not know about paraguard mixed with salt myself. Were it my tank I would try one or the other and would not mix them. I do not know the mechanism by which paraguard kills the ick. If it is by osmotic pressure then with salt the water could have too much such and be more harmful to the fish.

One other general thing to consider for those who for whatever reasons decide to try low doses of medications, be it salt or other sorts. This is the way to resistant strains of parasites and/or pathogens.
It seems new knowledge about gene exchange has come to light. That seems to imply that bacteria and perhaps also some higher organisms can exchange significant bits of genetic material. This implies that some benign bacterium which has developed a drug resistance can with contact transfer such a gene packet and confer the same drug resistance to a human pathogen. Just as a personal point of view these drug resistance legions of pathogens and much higher on my list of worries that things such as global warming.

Thought experiment only at this point = For salt it may be that the old "survival of the fittest" could be at work. That being salt concentrations at near lethal but still at less than 100% lethal to all ick hatchlings might be only lethal to 98, 99, or 99.9%. Even if only a fraction of a percent than can tolerate these near lethal concentrations thru some slight genetic difference and pass that difference on to their offspring then we are on the way to "super ick". Again just my thinking and not backed up by other than decades old knowledge of evolution theory.