Help Me Please!

[RachelMallory]

I have been battling ick for weeks now, and it was on the somewhat serious side. Not too bad, couple of spots, when I treated it it would go away. Then come right back. Now it's EXTREMELY BAD.
I don't know what to do anymore! I can't use a lot of medications with that malite green stuff or whatever it is called. I have scaleless fish. Freshwater puffers, bgk, and a fire eel.
I'm starting to get very worried and I need to know what has worked best for you guys.
Also, I have a 2.5 gallon tank that I breed snails in that my puffers eat.
I had an ick outbreak before in my smaller tank and put some of my fish in there for some reason, do you think that the ick could be coming from the snails that the puffers are eating?
PLEASE HELP ME. Thank you!

 

[Dieses Madchen]

I read from your previous thread about your current stocking, and normally ich wont affect a happy tank. Most fish actually have ich to a controlled degree.

Raise the temp of the tank SLOWLY to about 82-84F, and continue using the medications. I use them for about 5 days AFTER the white spots have dissapeared, unless the bottle says to stop sooner.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

That's the issue. Ich is still in the tank after it falls off the fish. The ich parasite has three different stages. It is only susceptible in one of those phases. There is the ich parasite on the fish itself that you can see. Then it falls off the fish to the substrate as a "cyst" type thing which will multiply into many more parasites. Then the cyst bursts and a free swimming variety will come out and infect your fish all over again. It is only during this free swimming form that the meds can kill it.

Raising the temp does two things. 1) the lifecycle increases in speed meaning you get to the susceptible form more quickly and decreases how long it is on the fish. 2) the parasite also can be killed by temps in the range of 84-90 degrees Fahrenheit. In fact, there are some folks who use ONLY heat to kill the parasite. I'm not one of them but it can work. I would be careful with which fish I do that method with.

 

[RachelMallory]

I did a 50% water change. Made sure to clean the gravel REALLY well, took out all of the decor and rinsed it in hot water and put in some ick treatment.
Turned the temp up to 82 degrees and I'm going to let it sit overnight, lights off, high temp.
Tomorrow. I'm going to do a 10% water change. Rinse all my decor again and then put it back in. Should I continue the meds after that if the white spots are gone?

 

[eaglesaquarium]

YES! Read my post above as to why.

 

[RachelMallory]

YES! Read my post above as to why.

Okay, so I'm going to do all that stuff anyways and keep doing meds for maybe the next couple of days?
Would it be better to just keep all the decor out until i'm done treating and keep the lights off and everything?

 

[eaglesaquarium]

Light and decor don't really play a role with ich. You have to keep the meds up for a few days after the last sign of the ich to ensure that you have actually killed the free swimming version. When completing a gravel vac, be sure to clean as much surface area as possible to remove as many cysts as possible so that the meds don't have to do as much work.