What is Ich?
This is a common question that is often asked, what is ich and how is it recognisable and what causes it?
The real term is ICHTHYOPHTHIRIASIS. OR commonly known as white spot.
It is an extremely comon parasite that affects aquarium fish. It is highly infectious and potentially lethal and manifests as tiny white spots all over the fish. The spots are no larger than grains of salt. The wide host range of this parasite is it's life cycle, and speed of mutiplication especially in a tropical aquarium. When you can see the white spot on your fish it's already too late for those ich particles to be killed, they can only be killed in the parasitic stage.
FISH parasite stage under the skin and fin. }TROPHONT exits fish and forms a reproductive stage(TOMONT) } The tomont then settles on the substrate and starts its division. The Tomont can reproduce 200-800 THERONTS The Theronts must locate a fish within 24 hours otherwise it will die.It is at this stage when the free swimming Theronts can be destroyed by treatment/chemicals. If it infects a fish the cycle starts again, if not and it is killed off by the treatment the cycle stops. Early signs of white spot are when fish begin to flick themselves against rocks. Other signs are your fish swimming in an odd behaviour as if they were trying to use the water to wash away an irratation. Then you have the white spots. There are many causes for white spot, fish catch white spot like we catch a cold! Some of the more common causes are stress, bad water conditions, live food that have been infected or you've bought an already infected fish without knowing it. The main culprit is the parasite Ichthyophthrius multifiliis
Treatment: There are many remedies out on the market, most are based on either Methylene Blue or Malachite Green. Salt can also be used(not table salt),but only with salt tolerant species and if you have a major outbreak than the "big guns" need to be brought in. The big guns being UV irradiation.
Treatment
Whitespot or ICH as it is known in North America is probably the first and most commonly encountered aquarium disease that hobbiests face. For many those first few ominous white spots that appear install dread and the reaction of "oh no my fish are ill, what do i do now?".
Luckily whitespot/ICH is one of the easiest aquarium diseases to treat and by following a few simple steps can be under control in a little over a week.
First step The parasite has a 3 stage life cycle, the first is spent attached to the fish, the second in the substrate and the third free swimming in the water column. To lower the ammount of the parasite in the water and substrate do a 50% water change and vacume the entire substrate really well. This will lower the parasites ability carry on infecting your fish.
Second step While in the first stage of its life cycle the parasite is immune to any treatment, to speed up its lifecycle so it enters its second and third stage of the life cycle turn your heater/s up to 29c (84f). This will cause the parasite to drop off of the host and enter its dormant and free swimming stages where medications can attack it.
Third step As soon as the first step has been completed add the measured dose of a recomended brand of commercial whitespot/ICH treatment. In the UK i recomend Interpet #6 Anti Whitespot+ or Waterlifes Protozin, follow the directions on the back of the bottle carefully making sure not to overdose or miss any part of the course. Repeat the course if the spots are still visable 4 days after the last dose.
During the use of any medication aeration should be increased as most medications lower the ammount of free oxygen available to the fish in the water.
Salt Many people recomend the addition of 1 tsp of salt per 10gallons of water when treating for whitespot. While this does not have any direct effect on the parasite it does aid in gill function which can be benifitial with species with high oxygen requirements and aid the fishes osmotic function to replace electrolytes lost during stress. Do not use where scaleless species (eels, loaches, catfish) are present.
So to sum up, to treat the parasite successfully you need to understand how the parasite works and to use the most effective med for treating it, but also the least stressful one for your fish.
Regardless of what people tell you, you should never use salt to treat ich on clown loaches- it is very stressful for them, and could end up finishing the clown loaches off before it rids them of ich. There are plenty of meds which are designed to be harmless to treat loaches for ich, so use those instead.
