The battle with Ich continues WTF

AR115

Exodon
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Jun 7, 2020
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We had battles ich for about a month (losing 3 of 4 of our new clown loaches and 1 tetra). After a month of treatment with Ich-X and daily water changes and frequent gravel vacs We thought we had it beat. No spots on the last loach or any other fish in the tank. We waited 3 weeks before adding any other fish. Yesterday we got 3 new clown loaches, RT shark and a few bosemani rainbows. We woke up this morning to the 3 new clown loaches with a few tiny spots but none on our slightly bigger original CL.! Immediately began Ich-X treatment. Do all clown loaches get Ich whenever they are new to a tank, sure feels like it
 

Dee eng

Giant Snakehead
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They are very prone to ich. What’s your temperature at? I keep my clowns temperature around 82-84%. Have my clowns for 5 yrs and never got ich. When I do get ich from my other tanks I usually just add salt and bump the temperature up to around 86-88% for a couple of weeks while doing wc everything other day and feed very lightly if their even interested in the food.
 

the_deeb

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Sounds like you successfully removed ich from your tank with the Ich-X treatment, then proceeded to re-introduce it again with a bunch of new infected fish.

This is the reason that quarantine is important. You should assume most new fish are are going to be infected, and you should plan to quarantine and treat before introducing them into your main tank. This is particularly important if you have fish like loaches that are particularly susceptible to ich infestation.
 

AR115

Exodon
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Should have stated in the first post but we didn’t get the new fish yesterday we introduced them yesterday so just to clarify sorry I mis stated that. All new fish had been in a 29 gallon QT for 2 and half weeks with no issues. I also keep the temp between 80-82
 

Red Cichlids

Piranha
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Jul 27, 2019
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I've heard that ich survives chlorine treatment and can come in on tap water. Not sure if that is true, but whether it is or not, ich can lurk at low levels in aquaria for long periods of time and wait for a moment of stress or some susceptible fish to come back with a vengeance.

Clown loaches are very susceptible to ich, and after trying to keep them many times over the years, I gave up. The way I care for my tanks with large water changes and fish in and out of the tank, sooner or later they would always get it. Beautiful fish, but I don't see myself ever keeping them again for that reason. There are lots of beautiful fish out there that have high resistance to ich, and I've chosen to go with them instead.
 

skjl47

Goliath Tigerfish
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May 16, 2011
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quarantine is important.
a 29 gallon QT for 2 and half weeks with no issues.
Hello; Sounds like you are on the right track. Two weeks plus should be enough for ick to show up in a QT from my experience.

When you treated the tank the first time did you continue the treatment for 7 days to 10 days after the last spot was seen? You may already know this but the only life stage at witch the ich parasite can be killed is right after it hatches from the egg and before it burrows into a fish. I continue to treat the extra days because unhatched eggs will lay about and hatch later.

If i have the correct information you kept the temp around 82 degrees during treatment. This may be a possible explaination as to why the ich could come back. Raising the temps to near 90 does one thing for sure. That is it speeds up the lifecycle of the parasite. At the cooler temps the eggs may have been able to lie around and still be viable for some days longer. Just a guess that I have not too much confidence in. I am a bit stumped that the ich was apparently gone for three weeks and then showed up.

By the way there is reported to be at least one strain of ich that can survive the higher temperatures. One of our more civilized and experienced mods has reported this.
Good luck and let us know if you can figure out what happened.
 
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AR115

Exodon
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when we originally treated the tank we kept temps between 84-86 for 3 weeks then spots went away although we lost 3 of the original 4 CLs. We continued Ich X for 7 days(after spots were gone from tank), after 7th day we dropped temps back to between 80-82. New fish were in QT tank with temp around 80 and showed no signs. After waiting out the QT we added them to community tank and spots appeared within the first 8 hours, again only on the 3 new loaches, the one original survivor who is much bigger now has no spots and no other fish have spots. My only thought is maybe we have not been doing a good enough job gravel vacuuming?
 

skjl47

Goliath Tigerfish
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My only thought is maybe we have not been doing a good enough job gravel vacuuming?
Hello; You had some fish in QT (quarantine tank) for over two weeks. You had ich in a main tank and treated it for seven days after the last visible spot was gone. I lose the sequence of when the fish were moved from the QT to the main tank, but it was after the extended seven days of treatment is what I gather.
Even at low 80 degree temps the ich should hatch in a timely manner even without the best gravel vacuuming. My new guess is the treatment may need to continue for at least 14 or more days after the last spot is gone.
I hope this is not a bother to him but I will flag duanes duanes as he is very knowledgeable about the ich parasite and may have better ideas.
 

duanes

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For me a quarantine of a few weeks is not long enough, some cysts can sit dormant for long perIods, I usually consider 3 months a minimum quarantine time, a friend who is in charge of an aquatic exhibit at a zoo considers 6 months minimal.
And since most clowns are either wild caught, or Asian pond raised, the strains for ick from those tropical areas may be very resistant to higher temps.
Here in Panama I have seen ick on fish where water temps were in the 90sF.
Most research on ick, has been done of North American and European strains that are from cooler waters, and not as evolved to resist heat, like tropical varieties can
And because of that reason, I don't bother raising the temps when treating (because those higher temps can make some of the secondary bacterial infections more virulent).
When treating I use salt at least 3 lbs per 100 gallons (resulting in a salinity of 3 ppt), and keep treatment up long after visible spots have disappeared, up to 2 months. I don't using volume (tsps, tbsps, etc, because of grain size,3 lbs of salt is 3 lbs, whether small grain a large, using volume may result in under treatment)
A salinity under that concentration may irritate ick, but not kill them, and to me, salt is much less stressful, and natural to fish, than some of the more toxic medications.
 
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AR115

Exodon
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The new fish that were added were purchased from my LFS a few weeks ago and were put directly into QT so they had never been in the community tank at all. I had misspoke in the original post and said "we got 3 new clown loaches making it sound like they weren't quarantined, when I should have stated we "added"). I won't make the mistake of not quarantining new fish again.
 
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