ich/ick treatment with corys

[Fry]

hey guys, my 20L has the current inhabitants:

1 half-dollar sized Angel
4 bronze/green corys
2 bala sharks

last week my smaller bala shark looked like it had ich/ick and it's fins were clamped and it looked reddish like someone blushing, it is now completely fine but now my larger bala shark has ich/ick but isn't very sickly, the corys and Angel are completely fine, the temp is a stable 79F and i am raising the temp slowly to 86F, i can't use salt because of the corys (or can i?)

according to this article, simply raising the temp to 86F should eventually rid this tank of ich/ick: http://www.aquahobby.com/articles/e_ich2.php

any advice/suggestions?

 

[ridether]

The key word is eventually…eventually could be weeks..when you us Temp/salt/remove C. you can get rid of ich in 34 hours. I would hate to see my fish suffer for weeks if there was another way.. Salt is only used to lower stress which helps the fish fight the ich. .

 

[guppy]

I have recently found several references to successfully using 2 tsp/gallon salt with cories. Salt does more than lower stress, when the swarm emerges from the encystment it is vulnerable to osmotic differential for a short time, this is why the heat and salt treatment works with both salt resistant and heat resistant strains of ich.

 

[Fry]

thanks guppy, i'll use 2 tsp/gallon