I swear if its not one thing after another...

[FINWIN]

This evening Patch ERUPTED in ich... it's insane, she's been in her own tank for several weeks and was fine up until today. Swimming normally, fins out and eyes clear. Eating normally, in fact she was greedy this morning. Generally she's more of a top swimmer and likes to hang out at the surface for long periods. So this evening when I placed the new hutches in Kong and her (in that order!) tank I noticed her fins were clamped. She briefly looked at the hutch then floated to the top. Then I saw her fins. Covered in ich! So now I've upped the temps to 86 and treating with ICH-X. Washing all towels in super hot water that I use on the tanks. All the quarantine tanks have their own gear and bucket, and all the quarantine fish are clear. In another area of the house entirely. My second go around with fishkeeping hasn't been as much fun as work. Fighting fish, scrambling to get extra tanks, ph crash for Kong, a baby Oscar that's swimming with a gash in his side (healing) and bangs himself up, fish going belly up after purchase and now this. Almost wish I could just get plastic fish at this point, tired of all this running around and work. Feel like I'm running a friggin hospital room.


I remember when I first got the parrots and oscar only the oscar had (mild, on one fin) ich and the parrots never showed it at all. Hmm.

Original Plan : Display tank, 1 quarantine tank
Reality: Display tank, 2 quarantine and 2 separate tanks

Notice how the two don't match?

 

[EntoStentor]

Who's patch?

 

[FINWIN]

The big female parrot in my avatar. She's 6-7 inches and huge. Pics are in the "Finny friends" thread.

 

[Fishflyer]

This evening Patch ERUPTED in ich... it's insane, she's been in her own tank for several weeks and was fine up until today. Swimming normally, fins out and eyes clear. Eating normally, in fact she was greedy this morning. Generally she's more of a top swimmer and likes to hang out at the surface for long periods. So this evening when I placed the new hutches in Kong and her (in that order!) tank I noticed her fins were clamped. She briefly looked at the hutch then floated to the top. Then I saw her fins. Covered in ich! So now I've upped the temps to 86 and treating with ICH-X. Washing all towels in super hot water that I use on the tanks. All the quarantine tanks have their own gear and bucket, and all the quarantine fish are clear. In another area of the house entirely. My second go around with fishkeeping hasn't been as much fun as work. Fighting fish, scrambling to get extra tanks, ph crash for Kong, a baby Oscar that's swimming with a gash in his side (healing) and bangs himself up, fish going belly up after purchase and now this. Almost wish I could just get plastic fish at this point, tired of all this running around and work. Feel like I'm running a friggin hospital room.


I remember when I first got the parrots and oscar only the oscar had (mild, on one fin) ich and the parrots never showed it at all. Hmm.

Original Plan : Display tank, 1 quarantine tank
Reality: Display tank, 2 quarantine and 2 separate tanks

Notice how the two don't match?

When when you hinted to me earlier something dark had happened to Patch and would post it later on a new thread, I was braced for the worst.
Well ich is bad enough, and a pain. I am dealing with black algae infection in 2 of my tanks but I think the heat treatment is working. Since I am tearing down one tank and replacing it with a bigger one, I am wondering if the beneficial bacteria are going to be eradicated by the 2 week heat treatment at 86-88 degrees. I can't find information on the upper degrees of heat tolerance of b. bacteria.
I am going to act as if the beneficial bacteria is gone and introduce media from my healthy tanks. >> I am now super vigilant about rinsing my vaccum and tubing with near boiling water. I think it is possible that the black algae spores transfered from the infected tank to a healthy one. No sign of the Sludge in the other tanks.
I feel for you--all you have been through.
I had to expand with more tanks when my cichlids didn't get along. I now have ten running tanks.

 

[duanes]

The ick could have begun weeks, or even months ago with only one cyst that is easily unnoticed under a gill plate. If you've just noticed her fins are now covered in spots, it usually means, the ick have slowly populated the tank over time to get to this point.
Each ick spot begets up to 100 new microscopic ick that in the confined space of a tank reattach to the fish, and each spot begetting 100 more.
In many cases the temp of the tank determines how fast the ick population rises. The warmer the tank, the faster the ick population rises. This is the reason aquarists are advised to raise temp, it speeds up the ick life cycle so meds can work. While ick is on the fish, the fishes slime coat protects the ick from meds, it is only when they hatch off the fish the meds kill the new ick.

As stated above, ick can be transferred with siphon tubes, nets, even one drop of water from an ick infested tank can infect another tank. New Plants can also harbor ick protozoa.

 

[Gourami Swami]

Sorry to hear that- Duanes covered it as far as how this could have happened (a million ways)

Ich is pretty prominent at petsmart and Petco unfortunately, we often will get fish shipments with some fish who have ich. And sometimes fish don't show symptoms, so nobody even knows they have it. The better chain store locations will isolate the fish and then treat the whole system. Many of the locations probably don't have very knowledgable people and so they do nothing.

Luckily ich is very easy to treat! I have hardly ever lost fish from ich- just bump temp to 86 and combine with a little salt, or you could leave the temp as-is and use the ich-x medicine. I usually use the first method at home, but at the store I use ich medicine and it seems to work well. Most fish recover in a few days time. I have always been advised not to combine temperature and ich medicine, though I must admit I have combined them to no ill effect. Perhaps would be tough on small, weakened fish, but on fish like large cichlids, they seem to laugh it off.
Good luck getting rid of it!

 

[duanes]

Don't beat yourself up over not seeing ick sooner, as GS said, it is easily "not" noticed, often until at an advanced stage.
There was a sayin used in our aquarium club by some, "if you haven't killed a lot of fish, you are not trying hard enough".
I also use the salt method for treatment, 3.5 lbs of any salt (NaCl) per 100 gallons.
I just received some wild fish from a river, and noticed one or 2 ick spots, so I am treating a 180 gallon tank. No extra heat, and because I live on an island where things like meds(impossible to get), or even a large enough volume of salt is hard to get, using 18 gallons of sea water I collect to bring the salinity to over 3ppt (parts per thousand). This is the minimum salinity I use to lyse the ick emerging off the fish.

 

[FINWIN]

Thanks everybody. I didn't get Patch at a big box, she was purchased at the "other" store that had the difficult manager.

She looked so terrible last night. Hard to believe so much change in one day! Yesterday morning she ate like crazy and was fine then boom! Ich city. The larger stuff not the salt sprinkle Brick had on one fin.

So update. I bumped her temp to 86 and gave the first treatment of ICH-X last night. Lowered the water level for more aeration from the HOB. Lots of aeration also from the sponge filter. She's basically just resting at the top with her fins closed, but she will swim around from time to time. She sloughed off a lot of 'slime' from the medication late last night. A couple of spots have disappeared already this morning. All the hanging slime is gone too. She gets another treatment tonight.

I think back to when I got the other fish in December. They were all in the main tank then I noticed Boss starting to scrape when the fighting started. He got a dot on his gill so I treated the entire tank. Brick was about 3 inches at the time and got the 'sugar sprinkles' on one fin. I figured it was stress related. Patch and Kong never showed symptoms (they were the ones causing stress) but were exposed. So they may have been more immune I think but maybe harboring a hidden cyst.

I probably didn't notice it in the early stages on Patch because of her light color. Her fins were clear right until the sudden outbreak. She's very robust. Normally she prefers swimming at the top and since she was eating ok I didn't see the warning signs.

Unfortunately Now I'll have to watch the other fish because of equipment use. I'll sterilize stuff today. There's separate equipment for Patch's tank right now.

Should I try 87 degrees if it won't bother her? I generally keep her tank at 82-83 anyway because she's in front of a window in the basement. Insulated curtains are behind.

 

[EntoStentor]

Poor patch! Blood parrots are so cute, seeing them sick is really sad

 

[Fishflyer]

Went I went through it a few years ago. I went with Aquarium Pharmaceutical Products-- API Liuid Super Ick Cure with Benzaldehyde Green that also provides a slime coat to prevent secondary infection. I raised temp to 82. Also used salt. Dose. Repeat dose after 48, 25% water change after another 48 hours. Four day ordeal--ick gooone. Monitor for reoutbreaks. Feeling for you.