White spots

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thebiggerthebetter said:
The treatment should continue usually for at least one week after ALL the symptoms disappear. Vacuuming is definitely helpful but not necessary IMO, unless the fish is doing really poor. The salt at ~2-3 (from 1 to 5) teaspoons per gallon kills the larvae in the free swimming stage completely interrupting the life cycle of the parasite.

A word of warning though: ich never happens for no reason. Reason #1 by 99.9% is stress - rehoming, bad water, wrong water, not enough oxygen, aggressive tankmates, inadequate temp, unstable water params/temp, improper WC's, some other prior bacterial/viral/parasitic desease, etc.

Most usually when the root cause is not identified and remedied, the ich treatment is not successful. For instance, secondary bacterial infections will ensue (inflammations... like the redness in your case) etc. - a symptom that the fish's immune system is unraveling as a result of the root cause and likely that the root cause has not been resolved (that is, if the ich treatment has been applied correctly).
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TBTB, are you in the camp that says that Ick is always present in aquarium water and a fish succumbs to it when they are stressed? I'm curious, have you ever had a case of Ick in an established tank where no fish, plant or any potential introduction of the parasite from an external source could be the culprit?

...hope you don't take my question the wrong way as this is something there seems to be two schools of thought on and I'm not sure which is correct.
 
Hey Alex, nice question and nicely put. Can you describe what the other camp postulates/professes because I may not be familiar with it - that ich is always or usually brought in with new fish/plants/etc?

All I knew and read said that ich is always present (on the fish, if memory serves) but suppressed by the immune system and healthy mucus layer function. I have not had too many ich fights, maybe half a dozen. From memory, they did occur with fish rehoming or bad water (NH3/NO2). Some with new fish, some with old - so the cases with the old fish may be construed as a proof from my personal experience.
 
Yeah, the two theories I have heard are...

1. It's always present in an aquarium and fish with weakened immune systems will come down with Ich.
2. Ich has no dormant stage...it's a parasite that is either in your water column (or attached to your fish depending on what stage in it's life cycle it's in) or it's not.

OP, sorry for the derail...this question has always intrigued me; I have never had an outbreak of Ich that didn't come about shortly after the introduction of a new fish. I'm leaning towards believing that it's almost like having fleas or lice...they are either there or not. I think it would be interesting to create a poll to see people's experiences...I'm going to create one.
 
well lost my pictus yesterday. I did add a rapheal a couple weeks ago but he didnt look like he had anything cause i checked him. He did stress out when i had to relocate my tank. Had to empty it and move and refill. I kept 3/4 of the original water in buckets so it was kinda like a water change. He got cought in the net when i went to put him back in the tank. Maybe that is what caused it? My rapheal and lima are doing fine. They are acting normal and there is no ich on them that i can see. So i will keep doing my water changes and vacume out the bottom of the tank and adding salt like i have been and my water temp is at 84. Is that high enough?
 
aldiaz33 said:
Yeah, the two theories I have heard are...

1. It's always present in an aquarium and fish with weakened immune systems will come down with Ich.
2. Ich has no dormant stage...it's a parasite that is either in your water column (or attached to your fish depending on what stage in it's life cycle it's in) or it's not.

OP, sorry for the derail...this question has always intrigued me; I have never had an outbreak of Ich that didn't come about shortly after the introduction of a new fish. I'm leaning towards believing that it's almost like having fleas or lice...they are either there or not. I think it would be interesting to create a poll to see people's experiences...I'm going to create one.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Good idea.
 
boosteshemi said:
well lost my pictus yesterday. I did add a rapheal a couple weeks ago but he didnt look like he had anything cause i checked him. He did stress out when i had to relocate my tank. Had to empty it and move and refill. I kept 3/4 of the original water in buckets so it was kinda like a water change. He got cought in the net when i went to put him back in the tank. Maybe that is what caused it? My rapheal and lima are doing fine. They are acting normal and there is no ich on them that i can see. So i will keep doing my water changes and vacume out the bottom of the tank and adding salt like i have been and my water temp is at 84. Is that high enough?
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Sorry to hear. It looked like the infestation progressed way too far on that picture.

A visual check of a new fish will not do much. The proper practice is quarantine for a month.

Who got caught in the net, pictus or raph? But anyway, it should not have mattered unless there were other strongly unfavorable circumstances, of the kinds I listed before.

Yes, 84 F is high enough. Keep a close eye on the tankmates for at least 1-2 weeks after you downwind the treatment.
 
the pictus got caught in the net. I now set my 10 gal back up for a quarantine tank. Ill be getting a bigger one like a 20 high or long. And ill keep an eye on them after the treatment is done.
 
Yeah, they are notorious for that. That's why I'd often use some kind of plastic ware instead of a net. Anyhow, unless you broke off a big enough piece of the pec spine and the blood was spewing, I don't think this mattered much.

For catfish, 20 long is much better.
 
Yeah nothing major happened other than.a small ripped fin. And I was leaning more towards the twenty long.

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