Dang, I Think It's Ich!

[oneponygirl]

I've been posting about my neons dropping like flies in the last week in the appropriate section but just now I think I noticed "salt" on some of my fish, neon and others. Here's what I know:

1. Water parameters. (ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, PH, temp', Hardness etc)

ammonia - .50, nitrate 5-10, nitrite 0, ph 6.4-6.6 (a couple of days ago ph was 7 and ammonia was 0), heater is set for 79 but I haven't put the thermometer back in yet to tell if that's the real temp

2. A full description of the fishes symptoms.

Oh boy, it all started a week ago when my neons started dying. At that time there were absolutely no signs of illness or disease. Color was good, activity good, eating good etc etc. Nothing to give a clue, just alive one time I went by the tank and dead the next time. Tonight I was doing a water change and the last remaining neon (out of 7; 4 new as of Monday and 3 original) came to visit me by the glass and I thought I saw "salt". Then after I'd finished the water change I thought I saw the same thing on one of my cherry barbs, then another and then my gourami swam by and I saw one speck on him too. There's not a lot, just a few on each of those. Other than that they all look normal, activity, color, eating etc (although just today I have to say that last neon looks a little "sucked up" in the middle).

3. How often you do water changes and how much.

This particular tank is brand new as of Tuesday as it's an upgrade of my old 10 gallon. I used the same sand, plants and water from my old tank, adding new (rinsed) sand, a few new plants, more water of course, and I stacked the filter from the old tank with the one in the new one to help the switch. Tonight I did an almost 20% water change. Any more than that is hard because I don't have the buckets for more than that.

4. Any chemicals and treatments you add to the water.

Only AquaSafe. My existing fish are used to well water which has nothing added. Our new house is on "city" water with additives but I should think that the AquaSafe would take care of anything bad.

5. What tank mates are in the tank.

All my stock: 1 neon tetra, 3 cherry barbs, 1 dwarf gourami, and 4 dainty corys

6. Tank size.

29 gallons

7. Finally Have you recently added any new fish?

4 of the 7 neons that I had when I did my upgrade on Tuesday were bought the night before. They were the first to die over a period of 3 days starting on Wednesday I think. I had a couple of days where I didn't lose any and then lost one of my original guys today.

I originally suspected a bad batch since it was all the new guys that dropped. Then stress when it moved onto my original guys (since by the time I upgraded my tank they had been moved three times - only because I had to move and just got in our new house a little over a week ago).

So I looked up whitespot on the forum (did you know that you can't search for "ich" here because it only has 3 letters?) and found some good info but I also wanted to ask if there's the possibility that it could be something else and what else I can look for so I can be sure before I treat. I read about the 3 steps of treatment on one of the threads and had some questions. So here goes:

Step 1 was to do a 50% water change and vaccum VERY well. I only have two 3 gallon buckets so changing 50% of a 29 gallon tank is a problem. My gravel vac is for my old 10 gallon so it's kind of short but I think I can make it work if I get a little wet. Any thoughts on the water change? Especially considering I did about a 20% change tonight (although I did NOT vaccum because it's a new tank so I didn't want to suck up all the bad stuff turning into good stuff).

Step 2 was to crank the temp to 84. Will this adversely affect any of my fish?

Step 3 was to treat with a med, up the aeration, and add salt. Any recommendations for a med that won't harm any of my fish? And I don't think that salt will work for any of my fish - can someone confirm?

So, like I said, help please! Thanks!

 

[Marcos]

You should have it covered, I had to deal with it around a month ago using info on here and it worked completely. I performed a water change, slowly raised the temp to 29degC then added Interpet No. 6. after four days I added another dose (temp still at 29degC) and within a week it was gone. It looks like grains of sugar on them but the med can't do it's job until it has left the fish and it's in the water, raising the temp helps this.

 

[oneponygirl]

OK, now I'm really going crazy, this morning there is no "salt" on any fish that I can see except what maybe one or two specks but it's hard to tell. What the heck??? Could it have been something else? I'm going to continue to monitor (i.e. stare really hard) at them throughout the day to make sure I'm not missing anything, but would still like to know what to do in case I do see "salt". Should I treat regardless? Which medicine available in the US will be good but not harm anybody including my corys? What about the salt recommendation? I think I should skip that one considering the breeds that I have. Still needing help please!

 

[oneponygirl]

Bumping this up. Can anybody answer my questions? (see above)

 

[Suriliel]

If your fish did have the salt grain spots on them, you probably do have ich.. but it sometimes looks like it's going away but it's not. The ich has 3 stages of its life cycle, and one of those is to drop into the gravel, so that might be what's happening. If it were me I'd probably treat anyways. As for treatments and how they will affect your fish, I have no idea sorry.. Good luck though!

 

[WILDER]

Turn temp up to 30, increase aeration, and read the med very carefully as cory and neons don't like parasites meds, plus i would recommend you do a water change before you add the med, you have a high ammonia reading.
Neons are very funny with whitespot, plus corys don't usually get whitespot, also the neons might not make it as they need excellent water quality.

 

[oneponygirl]

Yeah, I'm not seeing any "salt" on the corys. I was hoping someone in the US could recommend an affective med that will be safe for the corys as well as the rest. I was also wondering if the almost 20% water change I did last night would be enough or should I plan on doing another one today. I can probably get to a store today to get some meds I just wanted to have a good idea what kind before I went (I did read the pinned thread about meds but there were so many listed I was hoping someone could give a recommendation). Lastly, I don't think I should add salt because of the types of fish that I have but I'd like someone to verify. Thanks!

 

[WILDER]

Corys can tolerate small amounts of salt, but if you have plecs or any other scaless fish i wouldn't add the salt.
The med you will have to ask the lfs, but usually its half dose with corys.

 

[JoanneH]

I used protazin in my tank for whitespot and I had 1 panda cory in the tank at the time, he was fine and I understand they are very sensitive to water quality so uyou could try that med??

 

[oneponygirl]

Hey, someone woke up one of my older threads.

I did end up getting an Ich treatment, the only one available at my LFS was called "Ich Control". Pretty much just Malachite Green. I've been treating at half dose for five days (today will be the sixth).

My gourami doesn't have any more flecks, my neon tetra (the only one left) has only a few now, and the corys never had any (although I did lose one and I'm not sure why). I have only one cherry barb left that I can find (I found the body of one the other one is missing, assumed dead). I removed the living one because the poor thing is absolutely covered with white flecks. I put it in a two gallon tank so that I could treat it full strength and add salt without worry to the corys.

I'm keeping the temp up about 84 on both tanks.

I'm going to continue to treat my main tank at half strength but am wondering if I should do a water change so that I can vaccum the sand to pick up any parasites that may be hanging out there.