Different reactions to ich

[jandb]

Weird one for me here. I’m preparing to move fish into a new 260 but before I set it up I had to move some things in the fish room. All were qt’d and temps the same or adjusted by floating. I put 4 tiger striped silver dollars in a 75 gorwoit tank with 5 heros liberifer. 15 days later I noticed they had ich. I had been out of town for 2 days so it could have been at day 13. I heated the tank to 85 and salted the water. I also added a uv. The silver dollars have already cleared (day 4 of treatment) and the liberifer are terrible. I lost two today and am about to lose two more. They are laying on the bottom with a ton of white and slime just falling off them. Has anyone ever seen this such different reaction? I thought if anything I’d lose the silver dollars.

 

[kno4te]

Could be a super infection on top of ich. That’s what I suspect. Ich just laid down the foundation for something else to develop and build.

Can add aqua pro cure. This does help with problems like this. Especially if it’s parasitic. If there’s still time. Add a pump to ur tank to promote some circulation.

 

[phreeflow]

Wish I knew but I’ve dealt with an extremely stubborn and virulent strain of ich that was difficult to cure. I was told by an importer that it was a known Florida strain but who knows. I remember back in the days when ich was simple to treat with a few days of malachite green but what I faced wasn’t fazed by it.

In your situation, it’s likely that your silver dollars were the carriers and they probably had better immunity to that particular strain of ich than your liberifers. Also, kno4te is right...ich can be a gateway to a secondary bacterial infection and the combo probably did them in. Good luck

 

[MrsE88]

Was the white fuzzy looking? I lost 3 rainbows to a fast killing fungus. White fuzzy and slim coat falling off. It was horrible. I saved the last one and my other fish, but the others had no chance against it.

 

[Lilyann]

There is an Ich variant that is resistant to high heat and becoming increasingly more prevalent.

However, Ive always questioned the logic of adding high heat to treat Ich (regardless of the new strain resistant to high heat) due to the secondary bacteria that commonly proliferates the tissues where the parasite burrows in. It is common knowledge that bacterial spread is hastened by higher temperatures, so it seems counter-intuitive to use it as a treatment for Ich when secondary bacteria at these sites is so common.

I can see that the use of salt in this case, in the presence of high heat, is used to make these sites less friendly to the growth of bacteria: however, with many soft-water species, the use of salt can cause more harm than good.

I have found that the best treatment/preventative for the development of Ich is UV sterilization. The next most effective and safe for most species--if the cost of UV sterilization is prohibitive-- is malachite green/methelyene blue combinations found in such products as Paraguard.

 

[duanes]

Some fish (if they have been previously exposed to ick) may have built up a resistance to getting it again, and those that have been previously exposed can possibly be asymptomatic carriers.
Fish never exposed can be especially vulnerable
How much salt did you add?
Any salinity concentration under 3ppt is pretty much non-lethal to ick.
For a 260 gal aquarium, at least 8lbs of salt is needed to treat ick successfully.
And just because you don't see overt symptoms doesn't;t mean its gone.
I treat for a least a week after symptoms have disappeared, sometimes 2 more weeks more just to be safe, making sure salinity remains high after water changes by adding more salt.
I have experienced ick that have built immunity to heat in the high 80s, and even some meds.
Often if treatment is not carried out long enough, the surviving ick, will have built up some immunity
A high enough salt concentration actually crushes the emerging ick outer protective membrane, so immunity is an non-issue if the salt strength is high enough.

 

[jandb]

Welp. No good. One is still barely hanging on but the 4 others died. Silvers are non symptomatic. I've seen ich more times than I care to and this was just something crazy. Within a day it turned to a white slime that engulfed the heros. Their fins were tattering as well. These guys were wild. I've had them for almost a year and had to treat them for clamped fins when I got them. I wonder if something was latent in them and this just made it come out?