Please give advice! Ich starting!

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I

iManipulate

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 14, 2009
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Montreal, Quebec
I made a thread on ich before for when my friends aquarium was infested, but his only had a few fish in it, mine is way overstocked and my Oscar looks to be getting ich, can someone please tell me how to treat it without killing half of my fish?

I have the weirdest combination of fish, they're all small still though so it's not too packed. I have a 66 gallon, I did a test this morning, my ph is at 7, ammonia at 0 and nitrates at 0.1.

- oscar
- 2 spotted gars
- 2 rocket gars
- knifefish
- black ghost knifefish
- 2 polypterus senegalus
- polypterus endlicheri
- polypterus ornatipinnis
- clown loach
- green terror

And I have a 10 gallon with my healing clown knifefish that got attacked by my gar this week, he's in there with a small redline snakehead who was also in bad condition at the pet shop. I JUST took out the clown two days ago, and noticed the ich today, should I treat their tank for it too? I'm treating theirs with melafix right now.

So as you can see, I have quite the mix of different scale/noscale types. Should I use half the dose of my ich meds? Or should I try something else?

Please help me asap! I need to treat before they all get infested!
 
i'd start with raising the temp up to 84-86 and adding salt.
 
You need to treat both tanks. Go out and buy some ick meds, but make sure you only use 1/2 of dosage in the loach/ or any sensitive fish tank or you will kill them.
 
Okay, it should treat it all though right? Raise temp, how much salt do I use? Do I use the salt with the ich meds? I have this already. I know I have to take out the carbon, anything else? I'm scared of putting in 33 drops of ick meds, I don't wanna kill half my fish...
 
Don't use ich medication. Use salt. Don't use both. Just use salt. When you add the salt, mix up a solution of it in a separate container and then slowly add the solution to the tank over a day or so.

Edit: I think it's three teaspoons per gallon? And don't forget to increase aeration due to increasing temp -- warmer water contains less dissolved oxygen.
 
Before using meds, try increasing the temp as recommended and stop feeding your fish. If you have access to a diatom filter, run it for a week on the tank.

IMHO the safest strategy is to attack/kill/starve/filter out the free swimming stage of the parasite before they can encyste a new host rather than to use meds.

Higher temperature will shorten the amount of time they can swim around looking for a host before dieing and make your fish more active and harder to catch. Diatom filters actually remove the parasite from the water column. Stop or reduce feeding to reduce BOD and also keep your fish active.

GL!
 
i bump temps to about 86 and add salt at 2 tablespoons per 5 gal. works fine for me. no need for any meds.
 
Alright that sounds much safer. At the moment I only have 1 fish out of like 13 with it, so I don't think I need to do like a hardcore wipeout. I'll try bumping the temp to 86 and add 2tbsp per 5g.
 
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