Constant Ich Outbreaks, Nitrites High? Preparing For Fishy Funeral&#33

[teanuhh]

Finally set up my 25 gallon tank after mooonths. I've got a guppy, two platies, 5 tetras and a bad ass albino bushynose pleco. When I first brought the fish home, I of course had ich for a few days, but I treated it with quick cure, got my water perfect and it went away. Month later, my water tests fine, except for nitrites. I've done two gravel sweeps this week to get rid of the excess poop and whatever ich particles may be left in there. However, it's just been ich after ich after ich ever since I started this tank up... I've never had this much trouble just trying to sustain a healthy tank. Ever. Seriously, I've gone through a 1/4 bottle of Quick Cure. It's always been an easy, fun hobby. Now I'm getting to the point where I don't even want to bother with a tank until I move to a different side of town with better water. Help me? I think they're getting it because they're stressed due to the nitrites, but I don't even know what to do at this point. The temp is 76-80. I live in Arizona so water hardness is inevitable if that could be an issue. Any suggestions, throw them my way please! My fishies appreciate it.

 

[teanuhh]

I want to add that each gravel sweep was 25%, should I just do like 90% at once?

 

[Lunar Jetman]

What levels of nitrite are you experiencing? How did you cycle your tank? Did you put all that volume of fish into your tank in one go?
 
If you have nitrites the first thing you should do is carry out some water changes. I'd change 60% now, then 40% tomorrow and then 25% for the next couple of days, although the levels you have may require more changes.
 
How often are you currently changing water?

 

[teanuhh]

I haven't changed the water up until two days ago, that was when the nitrites started getting high. It's almost at 3ppm right now. I did 25% on Sunday and 25% yesterday. Before this my water has always passed weekly tests. I've got a lot of diatoms right now, but my tank is cycling. I just noticed that my platies and guppy have started eating it, does that contain phosphate like food does??

I started with two guppies and one platy. One guppy died. Added three tetras and one more platy a week later. Added 3 more tetras a week after that... Just recently got the pleco to be the maintenance guy last week. Everything has been going well but this ich is kicking my ass I guess I need to help the pleco out and clean some off?

 

[Ninjouzata]

I imagine their immune systems are lowered due to the tank not being cycled and that is why they keep getting ich. Or you aren't getting rid of it completely so it keeps coming back.
 
I'd return all the fish to the store and make sure you've gotten ich out of the tank (you can use very high heat once you've removed the fish) and then cycle the tank following THIS article.

 

[Meeresstille]

Well, if the Nitrites are that high, I would say the tank is getting closer to being cycled. You will need to bring those levels down to as close to 0 as you can, since you have fish in there. Nitrite is quite toxic and will interfere with their ability to oxygenate their blood. You will need to do lots of water changes to keep those Nitrite levels down. 
 
If I understand this correctly you've set up the tank and added your first few fish, and kept adding new ones in intervals even though your tank was not yet cycled. There are a few problems with it, but in terms of ich the fish were stressed living in an uncycled tank (Ammonia and Nitrite build up which is toxic) and with each new addition you may have brought in a new ich-infection.
 
Also, their are some strains of ich that are suspected to be immune to meds. Have you considered trying the heat-salt method? You will have to go with the half dose, I believe, since Plecos don't tolerate salt very much. This means it may take a little longer, so be sure to give it time to eradicate the ich completely. Any new fish you plan on adding to your tank you best quarantine in a separate tank for 6 weeks. If they don't show any symptoms of illnesses by then, you are pretty safe to go ahead and add them to your tank.
 
The ich parasite's cycle will speed up in warmer temperatures, which you want, so the parasite will enter the vulnerable stage quickly and the meds or salt can start being effective. At a temperature of 86 F the parasite is unable to reproduce which is also a good thing, so no new "ich babies" can be produced. At a temperature of 89 F and over the parasite will die, but such a high temperature is too much for most fish to handle.
 
Warmer water carries less oxygen, so you need to either create a bigger splash from the filter (lowering the water level for example) or adding an air bubbler.
Doing daily gravel vacs will reduce the amount of ich-cysts that have fallen off the fish into the gravel. The less cysts in the gravel, the less chance of re-infection. Hope this helped some!

 

[teanuhh]

Finally got some time away from work for my fishies. I just did a 60% water change... Went down to maybe like 1.25. Going to do the other 40% tomorrow... As for the ich, my tetras are covered and faded in color and not doing very good I've raised the temp a little but I don't have a decent sized heater, you simply don't need it where I live but going to swing by my neighborhood pet store and see if I can get one tomorrow, definitely want one on hand. How much salt is recommended for that treatment?

 

[Lunar Jetman]

Finally got some time away from work for my fishies. I just did a 60% water change... Went down to maybe like 1.25. Going to do the other 40% tomorrow... As for the ich, my tetras are covered and faded in color and not doing very good

I've raised the temp a little but I don't have a decent sized heater, you simply don't need it where I live but going to swing by my neighborhood pet store and see if I can get one tomorrow, definitely want one on hand. How much salt is recommended for that treatment?

 
If you've still got nitrites at 1.25 I'd carry out another 60% change, if not 75-80% to get that down. Remember if you have 1.25 and only change 40% of the water you'll only reduce nitrites by 40%.
 
My figures earlier were dependant on your levels so as they seem to be quite high you need to adjust the water changes accordingly. 
 
I'd therefore change 75% tomorrow and then retest the level to see where you are and that result will determine the next water change.

 

[Meeresstille]

Try 1 tsp of salt per gallon for now. Always dissolve the salt in some dechlorinated water before adding it to the tank. If they tolerate it well, you could try to add another dose, but I'm not sure you want to risk it with the pleco. Pay close attention to your fish's behaviour. If they seem too stressed you will need to reduce the salt in the tank again. 
 
After a water change you need to replace the salt that was removed with the water. For example if you removed 5 gallon, you need to dissolve 5 tsp of salt and add to the tank. 
 
If you have live plants in the tank they may suffer from the salt treatment, you could remove them until treatment is done. However, I've done the heat/salt treatment for ich leaving the plants in the tank, and they came through it alright. Only needed to trim some suffering leaves here and there.
 
You need to get those Nitrites down, close to 0, do as many water changes needed to achieve it. Especially if you are going to subject your fish to ich treatment. 

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Do not add one teaspoon of salt per gallon. You need to stop changing water if nitrite is the only issue. Instead you need to use salt, but nowhere near the quantities suggested above. Here is what to do in terms of salt, you actually want the chloride part of the salt. You will be surprised how little salt is needed.
 

 
PPM is a measure of concentration in water. You cannot weigh ppms. However, 1 mg/l is almost the exact equivalent in water to 1 ppm. So one can use ppm and mg/l interchangeably in this case. You can weigh milligrams.
 
To add 10 mg/l of chloride for every ppm of nitrite in the water, use the following steps:
 
1. Multiply your nitrite test reading by 10. This will give you the needed mg/l of chloride you need to add.
2. Calculate the actual volume in liters of the water in your tank. If your volume is in gallons you must convert this into liters. (As a rule, using the advertised volume of the tank at about 85% will put you in the right ballpark.)  1 gallon = 3.875 liters
3. Multiply the number in #1 above by the number of liters of water in #2 above to get the total number of mg of chloride you will need to add.
4. Because salt is roughly 2/3 chloride, you must multiply the number calculated in #3 by 1.5.  You now know how many mg of salt you should add to the water. Dividing this number by 1,000 will convert this amount to grams which are easier to weigh for most people.
5. Do not add the dry salt directly to the tank. Remove some tank water to a container and mix the salt in that, then add the salt water to the tank spreading it around the surface.
 
[SIZE=12pt]Hint[/SIZE][SIZE=12pt]:[/SIZE] We have calculated a handy conversion from grams to volume so one can measure in tea or table spoons which most folks are likely to have while a gram scale is not. The following calculations were made using an Ohaus triple beam scale: ¼ teaspoon of salt shaker sized table salt weighs 2 grams.
 
The readings used in this article are for API and similar type test kits which measure in total ions.

from a yet unpublished article by the same author as the cycling article here.

 

[Meeresstille]

The salt treatment I recommended was for ich on the pleco not to make the Nitrite levels safer for the fish. One could use salt to make the nitrite levels safer but if you're not treating the ich you will lose the fish to the disease.   

 

[WILDER]

This is a good article on whitespot (Ich)
So you understand more about it.
http/www.skepticalaquarist.com/ichthyophthirius

 

[teanuhh]

I did another water change, probably like 80%... No nitrites at all. My problem was my platies constantly eating the diatoms and leaving more waste than a goldfish. I'm pretty sure they're all going to die, they have ich as bad as Petco now except the guppy. He's basically invincible. Thanks for the help Hopefully my next round will go better since my tank will be cycled by then.