ick problems?

[tiger15]

With meds you take a chance of doing more harm than good. Over the years I have had ick a few times and healed it without meds. .

All meds, including human meds, have side effect and you have to balance the benefit and potentail harm. This is why you have to read the instructions on how to use them the right way.

Ick is not fatal to many fish, particually cichlids, and this is why without treatment, some fish will recover by themselves. In fact, in a tank wide outbreak, some fish never come up with ick while others are heavily infected. Many salt treatment appears to be working even though its effectiveness is low because many fish are resistant to ick and cure themselves. For loached, most tetra, you can guarantee that they will be dead soon if you delay the treatment.

 

[neutrino]

In fact, in a tank wide outbreak, some fish never come up with ick while others are heavily infected.

True. Due to the circumstances it was in nearly all my tanks in varying degrees. Interestingly, of all my fish my Kapampa fronts never got it. Was the SA fish that had it, severums the worst. And, in fact, severums were looking quite stressed as the infestation got worse, to the extent I was worried about them, not something you'd want to take lightly, because whether or not you think the ich itself would actually kill them, it does do tissue damage and as we know stressed out fish are also susceptible to additional infections.

Effects of copper based meds and potential problems depends on the form of copper, type of livestock, and other factors. To what extent it gets absorbed and then leaches back into your system also depends on your setup. Copper is absorbed by crushed coral, for example, which also means initial doses may not be as effective with coral substrate, something I've seen first hand. Some copper meds can actually be removed with carbon, others not. So there's no one blanket statement that covers copper meds. (for anyone interested, more info here)

In any case, I have plants happily growing in tanks I treated with copper last summer, so I'm obviously not having a residual copper issue.

 

[tiger15]

Some people like to use copper because it is invisable and you can still see the fish, and won't stain the silicon as MG. But I prefer to use MG because it turns the water green so I can observe the dosage. But in 2 days time, the water clears up so you know that medication has biodegraded and it's time to add a second dosage to root out the pathogens. MG is so toxic to ick that I never need to use the third dosage. So the treatment cycle with MG is 3 days, versus 7 to 10 days with salt treatment still no guarantee that ick won't return. When it comes to medication, under dosage can be just as harmful as over dosage because under strength medication can lead to mutation of more resistant pathogens. So don't hold back and use full dosage as recommended by the instruction.

 

[viejafish]

A lot of people advocate the use of salt remedy over proprietary ick remedy because it is less toxic. The difference between medicine and toxin is a matter of dosage. Each time you take an aspirin or Tylonol, you are consuming a small dosage of toxin which in high dosage will kill you. The reason proprietary ick remedy like MG or copper works faster than salt because they are 100 to 1000 times more toxic to the pathogens you want to eliminate, yet harmless to the host at the dosage you apply. When you use MG or copper, there is no need to raise the temperature because the free swimming form of ick are root out in one life cycle. When you use salt, which has low toxicity to ick, you must raise the temperature to accelerate the life cycle in hope that the pathogens can be eliminated in multiple life cycles. This is why salt remedy is slow to work, and there is still chance that the pathogens are not root out and will return even though the symptoms are gone.

Ick is one desease you rather have than other deseases because it is easy to treat. Ick is not even fatal to most cichlids except fry so even without treatment many will recover on their own. But if your loaches are infected, you don't want to select a slow remedy because ick spreads rapidly in loaches and any delay is a death sentence.

 

[ecoli73]

I have kept a school of 40+ clown loaches for last couple of years. Once I got in a batch of 3-4 loaches, and a week later I discovered that they were covered with ich. Unfortunately despite medicine, that batch all died. BUT, none of my other fish, including rest of the loaches ever got a spot. This even when temperature with in the tank often swing between 75 degrees and 68 degrees due to water changes.


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[viejafish]

I don't believe that temperature swing will trigger ick outbreak. There has to be ick spore carriers to trigger the outbreak. When you introduct new fish, there is always risk of introducing ick even though the new fish show no symptoms. Another reason is that ick spores were never eliminated in the last treatment and it reignited mysteriously due to temperture swing.

Loaches are very suceptible to ick and must be treated promptly when you see just a couple spots. Unfortunately, it is not easy to confirm ick when the infection is low and by the time you can confirm it, it may be too late for loaches. I have lost many loaches over the year from ick outbreak, some I have kept for years, and I learned my lesson how to treat them. IME, MG still works the best even though the label warns that only half strength should be used on loaches. As soon as you confirm that ick is there, you have to treat the entire tank right away using the recommended half dosage. There is no need to raise the temperature, and apply a second dosage even if the symptoms are gone to rook out the spores. A few time my loaches secreted a slime covering the body and looked like dying from MG intoxication. Don't throw them away as mine had recovered completely after the incident. I have tried copper and salt on loaches, all failed.