Help!

[Valyrian]

My red tiger oscar has these tiny white grain things on him. They're definitely not air bubbles. Anyone know what they are? The grain things are about the size of a grain of sand.

 

[freddyk]

Does it look like this? If so, he's got ich. It's not the end of the world but it needs to be treated right away.

1: Increase the temperature of the tank to 85. Ich does not do well in warm water, and can't survive mid to high 80's. Make sure theirs lots of surface agitation for oxygen.

2: Get yourself an ich medication. You'll want to use it twice, the second time a week after you finish the initial treatment. Ich has stages when the meds won't do anything, so this will prevent another onset of the same problem.

3: If you just bought the fish it may have been infected alread. If not, try to track down why it happened to prevent it from happening again. Problems like this are a result of stress of some sort.

 

[Valyrian]

What's the difference between ich and ick?

 

[freddyk]

"Ich" is short for the name of the disease - Ichthyophthirius

Ick is just the wrong spelling of the same thing.