Can't get rid of ick.

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evox53187

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Aug 6, 2013
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I have been fighting this for about a month. I have tried heat with salt. Now I have been using quick cure for about a week and half now. I came home from work to see my Oscar scraping on rocks. Has wounds on his side and his fin is tore up. I am lost. Anything else I can do. I do have a 10 gallon tank set up for new fish. Should I move all my fish to the other tank. Would that help me treat this. Or any other meds I should try. . Thanks guys

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Moving the fish may only make its worse. Give us some guidelines as to how hot your tank is and how Mach salt you added, either by table spoon per five gallons or by TDS reading.
 
My tank now is at 84. I had it at 88 for 2 weeks. I added 1 tablespoon per 5 gallons. I am used 3 full bottles of the quick cure. So about 12 treatments.

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Because of the life cycle of ich, it often takes at least a month to totally get rid of it, and can take longer.
Ich has a dormant stage, where treatment isn't effective, to kill the emerging ich in the vulnerable stage, your salinity must be at least 3ppt(parts per thousand) I doubt that 1 tsp per gal will achieve that.
If you can go to a LFS that has a conductivity/salinity meter, they may be able to tell you what concentration you have.
But I find 3ppt makes the water taste salty, if ich appears in my tanks, I throw in rock salt by the handful until I achieve at least 3ppt.
 
A few things.

1) Seems like you had started your cycle all over with a new filter 3+ weeks ago. How is that going? What are your parameters now?

2) Ich doesn't normally take this long to kill. Is it possible you are re-infecting? If anything comes out of the tank wet and is not dry when it goes back in (hose, bucket, net, plant, filter media) you can re-infect the tank.

3) Are you certain it's still ich? Flashing is a symptom of several things, so are you seeing white spots as well? Not sure if the re-cycling of the tank is causing irritation to your fish.

4) On 9/2 you said you said the ich appeared to have cleared up for many days, but said that you had just seen one new white spot. People recommended that you keep the temp at 88. What happened next? Did you keep it at 88 and for how long? Did the ich disappear until now?


And from all I've read, ich doesn't have a dormant stage. It has 3 stages (4 if you divide the tomont into 2 stages as one is free swimming and the other stays at rest) and none are dormant. It does however have a very slow life cycle at very low temperatures (e.g., 45 F), so perhaps some would call that dormant. Tropical temps are no where near that temperature range, so above 72 F, it would have a relatively quick life cycle. At those temps it would not 'wait' or 'stop'.

Having said that, it is highly resistant while attached to a host or encased as a tomont.

More info as needed.
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/ich.php
http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/ichthyophthirius
http://www.theaquariumwiki.com/Ich
http://www.metapathogen.com/ich/
 
I would try copper...but not at the same time as the rest.

If you only have an oscar, you still have time.

A picture of the fish please...make sure it is not velvet.
 
I had a bad spell with this when i first started out - i couldn't get rid of it, most the fish in the tank would die, i kept adding them, then netting them out.

I tried treatments, more fish would die, i tried salt, the ick wouldn't go away.

Then i tried heat, it worked, i've had Ick since, heat stopped it every time and straight away.

Just bump the temperature up and get good water movement on the surface for oxygen, 30C - 32C.

It hasn't failed me yet.
 
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