Can you get ick with out adding new fish?

[Tj203]

If a fish has ick, each spot hatches up to 100 new ick.
Most need to find a host right away.
But there may be a few that are programed to go dormant for a while, until another opportune time arrives.
May be 1 month, may be 6 months, may be a year, or a season.
This is how ponds that dry up have occurrences year after year.

I use 3 lbs of salt per every 100 gallons to eradicate ick.
I do not use the volume method, because 1 tbsp of salt of a certain grain size may not equal another grain size and not be a strong enough dose to do the job,
I use the weight method, because 3 lbs of salt is 3 lbs no matter what grain size, and if the concentration is not 3 ppt, some ick may survive.
All it takes is 1.
And you may not notice that one for months, until the tank is in epidemic status.

Well great minds think alike lol I did not trust that either so I went out last time and bought a hydrometer so I can dial it in. I will then dose the ick x

 

[Tj203]

dang, sorry brother you have had outbreak after outbreak here….

Yea it's crazy I qt everything and I have not got any new fish I thought I was safe. Might need to add more salt all the time

 

[Rocksor]

Well great minds think alike lol I did not trust that either so I went out last time and bought a hydrometer so I can dial it in. I will then dose the ick x

Dont mix meds with heat and salt method at the same time. Oxygen will be greatly reduce

 

[Tj203]

Dont mix meds with heat and salt method at the same time. Oxygen will be greatly reduce

Good to know! I did both will watch out for that.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Enjoy- the Review Article below contains more information on ich and more o more treatments than most know even exists.

It has a direct life cycle, which is temperature dependent such that the warmer the water temperature the faster the life cycle completes. The life cycle involves 4 different stages: (1) the trophont, which resides within the surface epithelium of gills, fins and other body surfaces; (2) the protomont, a free-swimming stage that exits the fish and settles on the substrate to become the encysted tomocyst stage (3) which in turn repeatedly divides by binary fission to produce tomites which are released to the water column. Tomites differentiate into the infective stage (4) the theront, which needs to find a host within a short window to successfully complete the life cycle by penetrating the epidermis and developing into the trophont stage before it dies (Lom and Dyková, 1992; Matthews, 2005). Theronts can survive for up to 92 h at low water temperatures; their survival being inversely proportional to the ambient water temperature (Wagner, 1960; Aihua and Buchmann, 2001)..........

long (e.g. 7–15 days in pond culture) duration in-bath treatments which target the free-swimming stages of the parasite (i.e. protomonts and theronts). Of the other two stages, the trophont is protected lying underneath the host surface epithelium (Post and Vesely, 1983) whilst the tomocyst is protected by a resistant coat (Ewing et al. 1983) and as such, are rarely susceptible to treatment.

from:
An assessment of the use of drug and non-drug interventions in the treatment of Ichthyophthirius multifiliis Fouquet, 1876, a protozoan parasite of freshwater fish
S . M . P I C Ó N - CA M AC H O1 * , M . M A R CO S - LO PE Z 2 , J . E . B RO N 1 and A . P. S H I N N 1
1 Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, FK9 4LA Stirling, UK 2 Marine Laboratory, 375 Victoria Rd, AB11 9DB Aberdeen, UK
(Received 17 June 2011; revised 12 September 2011; accepted 16 September 2011; first published online 14 November 2011)
http://dspace.stir.ac.uk/bitstream/...macho et al Parasitology Ich chemo review.pdf

 

[Tj203]

Ok I got a question It looks like there's only one fish that has ick Can I pull him out and treat him in the qt then treat the tank for a few days to just kill anything in there?

 

[Deadeye]

I would treat the tank. If one has it there is a good chance it spread to others.

 

[Tj203]

That's what I'm saying but just less time. If take the one out that has it I can treat him longer in the qt tank. Doing a 200 plus gallon a day water change suvks and I'm on a well. I can treat the tank for 5 or so days and treat him longer

 

[Deadeye]

You could pull him and also treat the tank. That sounds like the best plan to ensure that everything is eradicated.

 

[Tj203]

You could pull him and also treat the tank. That sounds like the best plan to ensure that everything is eradicated.

If it was 100 gallon tank I would not care but I just did it using pumps and it still took almost 2 hours