One seriously sick thought

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I have kept fish for 25 years. Not once in all that time has it ever taken me more than a week (usually 2-3 days) days to rid a fish of ich. And thats taking several very delicate species into acount. I've also kept a fair number of planted tanks in that time. Never once have I had an outbreak of ich after introducing new plants.

Even when I ran the fish department in a large chain lfs and had all the evils of their overstocked, underfiltered aquarium system against me never did I have a case of ich go beyond a week.

I don't use a particular brand or type of medication for the treatment of ich either. Just whatever is cheap and handy.

Hm....baffling.

Are you dosing lightly for fear of affecting the fish sensitive to the meds?
 
I have dealt with Ich before (when I was younger). I don't recall it being near this hard to kill. I think this is just a very nasty strain.
 
I dosed lightly (1/2) in the main tank because of the plecos and plants. I let that go for a couple days and then decided to move the non-pleco species to one tank and dose them full strength. I dosed the plecos in another tank at 1/2 blast. The plecos have never shown any visible sign of infection. As to the salt and heat - 86 is the max my heater will do. I brought the salt level up over a week to make sure I did not stress the plecos too bad, they seemed fine. I went to about 4 teaspoons per gallon before giving up. The Ich had started to take hold again (going from a couple resilient spots to about 15 total).
 
I use nothing but IchGuard II, which is a victoria green / formalin blend. Use at full dose as prescribed with any fish, scaleless included. Since catfish are my main fish I've relied on it for the two times I did bring ich home. No losses, just dead ich in the gravel. Didn't bump my temps, and catfish can't handle salt so I never tried that because it would be really dumb. Raphaels especially cannot tolerate it. So just the ichguard II for scaleless fish should work. Formalin alone also works but it's harder to come by around here for some reason.
 
confused1;4515798; said:
As to the salt and heat - 86 is the max my heater will do. I brought the salt level up over a week to make sure I did not stress the plecos too bad, they seemed fine. I went to about 4 teaspoons per gallon before giving up. The Ich had started to take hold again (going from a couple resilient spots to about 15 total).
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In theory, if Ich cannot survive without fish, then taking all fish out of the main tank for a couple weeks should effectively render the tank ich-free. No super cleaning or medication would be needed to clear the actual tank.

For the fish, I've just used Salt + Heat the 2 times mine have had it, and I haven't lost a fish to it yet. If you gradually increased the salt level over the period of a week, you may have created the salt resistant strain yourself. The salt level should be 2+ teaspoons per gallon within 12 hours of first adding salt. Any less than that and you give the Ich the opportunity to become resistant to it. The fish will appear to get worse for a couple days while the existing cycle runs it's course, but after 4 or 5 days the fish should be looking much better. Keep the treatment up for a few days after the last of the spots is gone and you should be all set.

Not sure what to do in this case if you did create a salt resistant strain of it. It sounds like trying to protect the sensitive fish with 1/2 doses of medication is actually working against you. Most fish (even sensitive ones) are hardier than people think. The 2nd time I treated Ich I went from 0 - 3 tsp salt per gallon immediately when I spotted it and bumped the water to 85 degrees. The tank included Plecos, Corys, Otos, and Pictus, and none of them seemed to have any adverse reactions to it. I guarantee they were thanking me 4 days later when the spots were gone, and they have been acting normally ever since with no spots in sight.
 
knifegill;4515809; said:
Raphaels especially cannot tolerate it.
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As a fairly new owner to two raphaels (one each striped and spotted) I thank you for that important tid bit. I didn't know that. Hopefully, I'll never need to know that, but I am glad I know it anyway. The darn things are so reclusive its easy to forget they are even in the tank.
 
This is an interesting thread. I'm with Izzi_here I've never had an out break that I couldn't get rid of in a few days to a week.

Just spit balling here but supose you set up a hospital tank with Ick meds, increased temp, no lights and put the fish in that doing daly water changes, then increase the temp in the original tank and treat the empty tank for Ick. The meds in conjuction with not haveing a host fish should rid the tank of the parasite in a week or so. Once all signs of Ick are gone from the fish put them back in their regular tank which should now be Ick free.

I've never heard of Ick being this diffacult.
 
I think you are right about the fish being hardier than thought. I was going easy because of the plecos, but in hind sight they would have been fine. Doing a total water change/vacuum every day for 12 days and leaving the show tank empty at 83 degrees worked. I lost most of the celebes raonbows though. It turns out they prefer brackish water and the constant removal of salt through the water changes was more than they could handle. It's a shame, they were a gorgeous bunch.
 
You very well might be making resilient strains of Ich, burn the tank for the good of us all, maybe put some holy artifact in there too, just to be safe
 
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