Ick Treatment Not Working? Need Advice!

[Mayu]

ok so some of my fish had ick spots... so I treated it by adding 1tbsp of salt per 5 gallons of water, then turned the temp up from 75 degrees F to 78.2.

The next morning things seemed good, so I didn't do anything to the tank to give it time to work its way through.

the day after a day of nothing, I noticed a few of my fish had spots again, the worst being on my sailfin molly. Then someone told me 78.2 is not nearly warm enough to speed up the ick cycle and kill it. They said to raise the temp to at least 85... and that will speed up the life cycle of ick... if you raise it to 86, 87 it will speed up the cycle and kill it within 10 days.

So yesterday I bought a new heater (since the other one only went up to 78.2) and slowly raised it till it was at 87 degrees. I emptied out some of the water so the waterfall from the filter would splash more and push oxygen through... and there's still the salt in the tank.

Today I checked on them, and the ones who had ick still looked like they had ick, and some of the ones who didn't have spots now.

Is that normal? is it too soon to notice a difference? Or is the heat/salt therapy not working?

 

[Mayu]

also, I just put in a new filter cartridge, and I siphoned the gravel today. I'll siphon again on Wednesday. (I hear you should do it ever 2 days.)

 

[NinjaSmurf]

Okay, quick questions. How long has the tank been set up, what all fish are in there, which ones have ich? When you changed the filter pad did you take the old one completely out? Also, I would turn the heat down, that sounds awfully high, a lot of fish can't handle temps that high for very long, you could be adding to the problem. I would put it down to about 80f, it's still high enough to deal with ich, but won't stress them out as much.

Oh, and depending on your stocking you really don't need to be doing water changes every 2 days, once a week is the usual.

 

[Mayu]

1. it's been going for about 5 months now. I cycled it for a month with head/tail light tetras before adding new fish... then I added the Mollies, then the neons, then the x-ray bellies.

2. I have 2 mollies, 3 black neon tetras and 6 x-ray bellies

3. every resource said 80 degrees is not high enough to speed up let alone kill the ick... it has to be no lower than 83, no higher than 87 degrees... So I'm going by what several resources say. One resource says 85 is high enough to not only speed the process up, but kill the spores once they've burst off the fish and become free swimming. They'll be too weak to attach themselves to a new host, and they'll die.

4. I was told I need to syphon out the gravel at least once every 2 to 3 days by a few different people to get rid of ick spores

5. The temp was raised slowly, and has been maintained for about 24 hours now... no one is showing signs of extreme stress, no one is racing to the top of the water for air. I'm also feeding them bloodworms and tubiflex worms to give them extra protien... and everyone seems to eat pretty well.

So I'm trying to figure out what to do. Everyone says something different. Some say copper based treatments are the only cure, some say copper based treatments can kill your fish... some say salt and heat alone will work if you treat at 87 degrees for 10 days, some are saying you have to treat at 84 degrees for 2 weeks with a gravel syphon every other day.

I just want to try to save my fish.

 

[Mayu]

I know I can't post the addresses of sites I've visited since it's against the rules, so I'll post the quotes about the temps I got from them.

"I always recommended 85F+ for this treatment, but there have been reports of mixed results from others who have tried this, so I went higher"

"Be sure that when you raise the temperature you do so very slowly. Not more than one degree every few hours. Your ultimate temperature should be about 85F."

"Slowly raise your temperature to 86-88 F and add 1-2 Tbs of aquarium salt to your tank per five gallons"

"Once the heat is increased to 86+ degrees, you must keep it there for a minimum of 2 weeks after the last sign of Ich is gone. The reason behind the particular temperature, Ich can not survive temperatures higher than 85 degrees"

"If your fish are more heat tolerant, try increasing the temperature to 32°C/89.5°F for the first 3-4 days to kill the Ich. Then reduce temperature slowly to 30°C/86°F, and hold it there for an additional 6-7 days, or until a total of 10 days have passed. Gauge the heat tolerance of your fish by observing their reaction."

and so on

 

[NinjaSmurf]

Hmm, the highest I went when I had ich was 83, and I wasn't using salt... I never wanted to risk any higher. Thing with ich is, as far as I remember, is that it is always in your tank, it just actually affects the fish when they are doing poorly for some other reason. Perhaps there is something else going on in the tank and the ich is just a symptom?

The other thing I was worried about was you replacing the filter pad, did you put the new pad in for at least a couple of days before taking out the old, or keep some of the old media in the filter?

I do know how you feel, I just lost most of my fish to illness and I'm still not sure what it is.

 

[Mayu]

I weaned the new filter pad in for about 2 days before completely replacing the old one.

so I just don't know what to expect. I've never really treated ick before. I did a while ago in an old tank... and the fish died from the coppersafe treatment I used, which is why I'm leary about using medications to treat the issue.

So I thought i'd treat with heat and salt... but so far I'm wondering when I'll see the effects starting to work. Cause no one seemed to improve and in fact, some have new ick spots.

it's frustrating cause It seems I'm in a lose lose situation... can't use coppersafe cause I've read more bad things about it and had a bad experience... don't know if I'm doing the heat/salt treatment right... and haven't seen much improvement since starting yesterday...

so I'm just a bit frustrated and wondering if I'm doing something wrong.

 

[WILDER]

Size of tank in gallons or litres.
Need to look at your water stats in ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and ph.

I think I would forget the salt and add a whitespot med.

 

[Mayu]

it's a 30 gallon (so I'm assuming that's 113 litres?) everything seems under control except nitrates. While it's still in the safe realm, it's 20. I'd like it to be 0 though. pH is at 6.8. I'd like to move them to a 55 gallon once it's finished cycling, but I don't want to do that until the ick issue is over.

the good news... the fish that seemed to be effected the worst seem to either have less spots or be completely spotless... unfortunately, the fish that were either seemingly uneffected or didn't seem to have many spots are filled with ick now. Perhaps they had ick and I didn't notice it till now.

I don't know if that's just the natural course.

all I know is, I was told that at 83f it speeds up the life cycle, at 85f it won't infect new fish, and 87-89 it kills the ick once it's free swimming.

So I just don't know. I'm thinking if this doesn't work by the end of the week I may have to find a medicated treatment if I want to save my fish.

 

[WILDER]

If things get worse I would add a whitespot med.
If the salt seems to be working, just carry on.

You can only get a nitrate reading of 0 if your tap nitrate reading 0, live plants.

 

[Mayu]

ok.. FINALLY got my water test kit in. (I've been using strips up till now.)

I did a test.. Nitrates were 0, nitrites are 0, ammonia is 0 and high range pH was either 7.4 or 7.8... the colors are very close, but I think it was more 7.4.

One of the fish hit worst by ick originally is almost clean from spores... the one who looked pretty bad today is actually looking better... it looks like a lot of the spores already fell off.

all of the fish seem to be tollerating the 87 degree temp... and I'm not seeing any new spores on the fish that had no spots...

so maybe we're getting out of it... I'm not going to jump the gun though. I'm going to keep the temp at 87 for at least 10 days, then start to lower the temp slowly for a few days after that till it's back to normal, then I'll do a water change and get things back to normal.

Until then I'll keep things as is, and keep doing a gravel vaccum every other day to pick up loose spores.

 

[back2Fish]

Hello, well it seems as though you are doing everything correct, however, I must say 87 F does seem a little high to me for ick, normally I would only suggest going to 85 F tops, but I won't quibble over 2 degrees as long as your fish are not showing signs of additional stress. The only thing I did not see in your regime is the "black out" method. I realize that some people disagree with this course of action for ick, however, in my past experience I have found that blacking out the tank for 3-4 days, increasing the water temp to 85 F and adding salt usually does wonders with ick. Also as suggested you can add white spot treatment to the tank as well.

Best of luck to you.

 

[Mayu]

is there a specific brand of white spot cure I should be looking at? cause I have coppersafe which says its for whitespots but like I said, I've heard bad things about it, and I've had a bad experience a few aquariums ago.

 

[WILDER]

Need location for a med. What country do you live in?

Glad there on the mend.

 

[Mayu]

I'm in the states. I just checked in on them today... almost all of them are spotless. the one who still has spots has only a few small ones left.

I'm undecided if I want to do a gravel vaccum today or not... I'd hate to disturb them since I just did one the day before yesterday... but I was told you should do one ever other to every two days to pick up loose spores that are resting in the gravel. So I'm trying to decide if I want to do a gravel vaccum today or tomorrow.