Diseased Jumbo Cardinal Tetras

[Gaymarc]

Hi all. I'm new here and this is my first post. My brother has been on here for a long time and advised me to post my question/problem here. I set up a new aquarium a little over a month ago. It was immediately cycled thanks to my brother giving me good media. I've had a constant disease problem though. First it was bacterial infection which I cleared up. Now it's ick. and I've been treating the Ick for over 3 weeks now. 2 weeks with Quick Cure and 9 days with Wardley's one. Anyway, it's just the jumbo cardinal tetras that have had this problem. They won't shake it and after all this treatment, one has it worse than ever. Rest of fish are fine. My only thought on it now is, my PH is high, around 8.0 and my thinking is that it is causing constant stress with tetras and therefore they can't shake it. I will be setting up a Fluval 305 in next week and using peat in one cannister to lower the Ph, but for now should I just say goodbye to the tetras and let them go? I've stopped treating the tank as of Thursday. that was the last treatment. Havn't put carbon filters back in yet. Was going to tommorrow. The ICK won't die, but again it's only the #41#### tetras. Thanks in advance for any help you guys may have.

 

[waterdrop]

If you can find a post by oldman47, he has a good link in his signature about ich/white spot and you could double check the techniques you used against his source. My only other thoughts are that yes, you might be right about them not liking the hard water. Generally tropicals can do ok as long as the mineral content doesn't change quickly on them but its true that neons/cards seem to thrive in soft acid water similar to their creeks down in the amazon. My other thought is that neons/cards almost always do better when introduced to a new tank no sooner than 6 months after it was started up, regardless of the cycling status. It sounds like you may have introduced them sooner than that and if so then your case would reinforce the wisdom of that guideline.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

There is an excellent treatment of the ich subject here that should get you out of the trouble you are in. Any ich treatment that has been going on for 3 weeks has completely failed. My own ich treatments using the simple salt and temperature approach took less than a week to clear all signs of ich in my tank.

 

[Gaymarc]

Thanks for the info those who responded. I didn't know about the Tetra issue with new tanks. Yeah I've seen the salt technique mentioned lots, but I've also read that you shouldn't do that if you have catfish or loaches and I have both. Is salt ok to use with those fish as well as a gourami? I have a 56 gallon tank so how much salt should be used? Or should I just forget about the tetras seeing that my tank is so new.

Thanks again.

If you can find a post by oldman47, he has a good link in his signature about ich/white spot and you could double check the techniques you used against his source. My only other thoughts are that yes, you might be right about them not liking the hard water. Generally tropicals can do ok as long as the mineral content doesn't change quickly on them but its true that neons/cards seem to thrive in soft acid water similar to their creeks down in the amazon. My other thought is that neons/cards almost always do better when introduced to a new tank no sooner than 6 months after it was started up, regardless of the cycling status. It sounds like you may have introduced them sooner than that and if so then your case would reinforce the wisdom of that guideline.

~~waterdrop~~