I was curious about the tank situation. At my petsmart I was looking at the tanks and noticed pipes going to a back room and thought that was odd while at the 2 family stores each tank is separate.
High ph
- Thread starter jwitty
- Start date
If you've noticed a fish in the main tank with ick (or even in the bag with others), a quarantine tank is probably too late, you need to treat the entire main tank.
The white spots on fish are constantly shedding new young microscopic ick, that eventually will infect all fish in the tank unless they are wiped out. The young ick can sit dormant in the substrate for weeks before reinfecting, this is one of the reasons it is advised to raise temp, raised temp increases the life cycle allowing salt, or meds to get the ick while in its vulnerable stage.While on the fish meds are basically ineffective until they hatch off.
Another reason treatment should continue a couple weeks after the last spot has disappeared.
BTW I agree with Carpcharacin about the alkalinity (buffering capacity) being high, from your test results.
This also indicates the fish to avoid are soft water species (many gouramis, Amazonian cichlids and tetras fall into this category). In hard water (like yours) their health is not always going to be great, and they become very susceptible to diseases.
The white spots on fish are constantly shedding new young microscopic ick, that eventually will infect all fish in the tank unless they are wiped out. The young ick can sit dormant in the substrate for weeks before reinfecting, this is one of the reasons it is advised to raise temp, raised temp increases the life cycle allowing salt, or meds to get the ick while in its vulnerable stage.While on the fish meds are basically ineffective until they hatch off.
Another reason treatment should continue a couple weeks after the last spot has disappeared.
BTW I agree with Carpcharacin about the alkalinity (buffering capacity) being high, from your test results.
This also indicates the fish to avoid are soft water species (many gouramis, Amazonian cichlids and tetras fall into this category). In hard water (like yours) their health is not always going to be great, and they become very susceptible to diseases.
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Can ich kill a fish with no symptoms? I just pulled a fish out with ich two days ago. I will be going to the store right away for meds. Are there any fish that might not be compatible with the meds and/or get ill from them? I have a knife fish in it right now that I’m most worried about. I did put in a uv sterilizer that I had previously so hopefully that will help if anything. Any meds you recommend? The temps are 77 by the gravel and 80 on the surface.
I use salt to kill ick, 3 lbs per 100 gallons.
Doing water changes with the vacuuming of the substrate help, because it removes some dormant ick in the substrate when old water is discarded. Any new replacement water needs the appropriate percent of salt added to maintain salinity.
Treatment may help some fish survive (all maybe, maybe not) lack of treatment may assure all fish die.
UV will only kill the parasites that are sent thru it, and only kill if the detention time is long enough under the UV rays to scramble their chromosomes. Some parasites need more detention time than others, so a slow flow rate is needed.
Sometimes ick attacks the gill membranes of a fish and is unseen because it's under the gill plate. If one fish has ick you must assume the entire tank needs to be treated.
How long has the tank been set up?
Did you quarantine the latest fish added? How long?
Arethey the ones you've noticed ick on.
Doing water changes with the vacuuming of the substrate help, because it removes some dormant ick in the substrate when old water is discarded. Any new replacement water needs the appropriate percent of salt added to maintain salinity.
Treatment may help some fish survive (all maybe, maybe not) lack of treatment may assure all fish die.
UV will only kill the parasites that are sent thru it, and only kill if the detention time is long enough under the UV rays to scramble their chromosomes. Some parasites need more detention time than others, so a slow flow rate is needed.
Sometimes ick attacks the gill membranes of a fish and is unseen because it's under the gill plate. If one fish has ick you must assume the entire tank needs to be treated.
How long has the tank been set up?
Did you quarantine the latest fish added? How long?
Arethey the ones you've noticed ick on.
Don't know if I may be too late to help on this. Sorry to hear you've lost some fish, hopefully some made it through. In my experience "most" fish will adjust to whatever your ph is and live happily if you acclimate them slowly and keep it stable (kh as mentioned before helps stability) as long as it's not in the toxic range (below 6 beneficial bacteria starts dying and breaks the cycle, above 8 turns ammonia very toxic). The uv light is never a bad idea as long as everything is established and already healthy but if your having issues with disease keep in mind to turn it off while medicating with anything other than salt as it will kill the good stuff that floats in the water too (meds) but won't kill the stuff attached to rocks and such. Often after medicating for ich (other than salt)it will break or at least alter your cycle of beneficial bacteria too, you may have mini cycles and you may want to turn off the uv temporarily and monitor water parameters and keep up on water changes to allow it to catch back up to it's cycle and let the good stuff reattach to rocks and the filter media and recolonize. In my opinion uv is more of a prevention than a fix. Good luck hope everything is going well by now and if nothing else hopefully this post will help a little in the future.
