Ich and medicating

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G

garyo

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Sep 13, 2010
74
0
6
united kingdom
guys,

i recently inherited a flowerhorn from a friend that went straight in my tank (i know i should have quarantened). the problem is that after a few days it had signs of ich so i treated the tank with meds (malachite green and formaldehyde) i dosed as per the instructions and after a week it seems worse! i have repeated the dose and now i have two very sick pictus catfish and my hartwegi has lost most of his colour and is very lethargic.

the flowerhorn is still covered in white spot and its been about ten days!

any thoughts?

the water parameters are fine and temperature is at 27 degrees.
 
Ick gets worse before it gets better. It's no quick fix. 86-88 degrees, dose up the salt, turn off the lights, and let it go. It takes a few days but it is beatable.

I don't use meds since this happened with my first redtail. I think I messed up the doses and poisoned him. I have battled ick a few times now without meds and it works just fine! Good luck.
 
Cheers Steve,

i am just worried that if i keep medicating then i am going to lose all my fish.

i thought that cichlids werent as bothered by meds as scaleless catfish, but my hartwegi doesnt look too good!
 
If you have been using the malachite green/formaldehyde treatment for 10 days at 27 celcius without improvement, its time to change the treatment regimen (higher doses/more frequent doses, vacuuming the tank daily, etc) or change to a new treatment like heat and salt. At 27 C (80.5 F) ich takes about 4 days to go through a complete life cycle, and therefore in 10 days it has gone through a couple cycles so you should have started to see some improvement by now.

In general scaleless fish are more sensitive to treatments, so you do need to keep an eye on your pictus cats if you are going to adjust the dosage. You can watch their respiratory rate as a good indicator of how stressed they are. In my experience pictus catfish are extremely prone to ich infection, and difficult to treat once a bad infection sets in.

Good luck!
 
i just got over a case of ick. i did a very large water change 75% to get rid of the medication i put in (by help from mfk), turned the temp to 87, and added aquarium salt doing about 25% water changes every day. mine was gone in a little over a week. good luck man!
 
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