Clown Loach Ich [Help!]

[Joe21]

I have a 40 gallon aquarium with mostly peaceful community fish. I also have 3 baby Clown Loaches that I just recently bought for my future 125G tank.

My loaches now have white spots (ICH), but are still very active.

-Should I remove them? (I have a spare empty 10 gallon tank)
-Should I treat the entire tank?

I know I must keep the lights off, gradually raise the temperature to 86, and use Ich treatment. I've also heard of using salt. Tell me how I should go about doing this.

 

[fluttermoth]

Witespot is caused by a parasitic worm burrowing into the fish's skin. If some fish have it, you need to treat the whole tank, as it will be in present in the tan, not just on the affected fish..

The problem with whitespot is that you can't kill the parasite while it's in that cyst (the actual spot) on the fish; you have to wait for it to burst and the worms go into their free-swimming phase before you can kill them.

Raising the temp speeds up the life cycle of the och so it reaches that phase quicker; if your fish can stand a temp of 30°C, then that will (so I've heard; I've never treated ich with heat myself) kill the worm; if not any temperature rise will speed up the bursting of the cycts.

Salt will also kill the free-swimming worm, but it's not good for your clown loach (they don't have scales, so are more sensitive) so you'll probably want to use a proprietary med from your LFS. Check the bottle VERY carefully before you buy, as some of them aren't suitable for loach, or they might need to be used at a lower strength, so do watch out for that.

Do some extra massive gravel cleans too, as after the cyst and the free swimming stage, the worm sinks into the substrate as an egg, so you want to be hoovering them out.

Hope that helps; good luck!

 

[holidayinn]

If you increase the temperature (recommended) also make sure to increase aeration..add another air pump or something.

I've found young Clown Loaches to be easily susceptible to Ich, would recommend keeping larger clown loaches, 3-4", much more stable.

 

[Joe21]

Thanks for the answers. I raised the temp and am just using salt.

How much salt should I use? Some say 1 tspn per 5 gallon, some say 1 tspn per gallon.

Also, do I need to turn off the canister filter?

 

[fluttermoth]

I wouldn't use salt with clown loach; they're quite a delicate fish and you could kill them.

Use a proper med and don't switch your filter off; proper whitespot meds won't damage your bacteria and the fish will need the filtration.

 

[justbreathe]

I have a 50 gal tank with community fish. My two clown loaches have ich.

After the first treatment with Rid-Ich Plus the black skirt tretras were ich free.

My clowns still have ich after three treatments at 24 hour intervills, followed by three treatmens at 12 hour intervills. I have been changing water with each treatment but wonder if It is still necessary every 12 hours.

I also use stress coat+ to treat water I am adding and add one table spoon of aquarium salt per 5 gal added. I have temp set at 85f.