Ick Guard Making My Fish Sick?

[WeslinCamden]

About 4 days ago I noticed the dreaded "white spots" were on a couple cherry barbs in my tank. I initially added about a tablespoon of aquarium salt to my tank (36 gallons) and turned up my heater to 82 degrees as a quick fix too try to get rid of the ich, But the next day those barbs gained a decent amount of spots and I noticed it spread to a couple of the other barbs. I figured I would do another water change when i got home later that day, but by the end of the day almost all 11 of my cherry barbs had ich. So i decided to get some medication. Ick Guard by Tetra seemed like the easiest and best option that they had available. So the next morning I did a 20% water change added a half dose of the tablets and made sure too remove the carbon filter. When i got home at the end of the day, my barbs were much less active. So the next morning i repeated the process, and once I got home last night, most of my barbs had fewer spots, but were also just sitting around the top of the tank. So today i decided to do a 33% water change and add 1/4 dose to the tank, and while the ich is diminishing, my fish are all still lethargic and have no appetite.
 
I'm sorry for the long post but, I really love this tank and would hate to lose any of these fish.

  I also tested the water after the water change with a liquid test kit, and my ammonia was already at .25 ppm.. With everything else at the proper levels. I would appreciate any feedback on the situation and would love to hear your experience with these ich medications. 

 

[nic1]

Its probably the ammonia making your fish sick and lethargic,
Do a massive water change over 50% and try and get that figure to 0, you can repeat this tomorrow also until it runs at 0%, when you do make sure you take the water from the bottom of the tank sucking up the dirt from the substrate. Do not add any more meds.
Run the carbon in your tank to get rid of the medication currently in the water while you are doing this. After two days add in Esha Exit.
I have always used this when my fish have white spots or if I introduce new fish, I have had no ill effects from it and from experience I wouldn't use anything else, it has proved itself time and time again in my tank.

 

[Akasha72]

Hi, I would agree with nic, the ammonia is making them ill. They are unwell anyway with the white spot but with ammonia in their water that will be making them doubly sick.
I see you are in the U.S and it's not the first time we've come across our U.S members having ammonia in their tap water. Bearing this in mind I'd run an test on your tap water to see if there is anything preset there. If indeed you have got some ammonia in your tap water doing a water change won't get rid of it. The best way in that situation is to add Seacham prime which contains something to bind up the ammonia. 
 
It's also worth noting that high temperatures can decrease the amount of oxygen in the water and that would also make the fish lethargic. Adding an airstone would help sort this. Alternately, if you don't have an air pump, try to increase the surface agitation with you filter outlet.
 
White spot is usually caused by stress but can also enter the tank via new fish. If you havn't added any new fish recently you need to look to what could be causing stress.
 
Hope that helps

 

[the_lock_man]

TBH, I doubt it's the ammonia that's making them lethargic (if you use the API kit, that very often misreads a 0 as a 0.25ppm anyway), Most fish will not show outward signs of distress at that level of ammonia, and if you have low pH water, most ammonia will be in the less-harmful ammonium form.
 
It's probably the medication that's doing it. Most fish medications are basically heavy metal pollutants, which is why you take the carbon out. What you are effectively doing is poisoning everything in the tank, to a degree that will kill the whitespot protozoa, but not the fish.
 
Akasha is also correct in that the increased temperature will lead to decreased oxygen, so increasing oxygenation would be a good idea (and as she says, will probably be contributing to the lethargy).
 
Is there any reason why you used a half-dose? I would strongly suggest that you follow the instructions on the bottle to the letter. The thing to note with whitespot is that once the spots disappear, you haven't beaten it. The protozoa are only susceptible to the medication when they are free-swimming, not when they are in the cysts (the white spots), and the instructions will almost certainly reflect this by telling you to keep the treatment going for a certain number of days. That's why you should follow the instructions exactly.

 

[WeslinCamden]

Thanks for all the feedback! For starters i've tested the tap water here before and it doesn't contain any ammonia that i can read at least. However, We do have pretty hard, high pH water (Nearly 150ppm and about 7.8) so i doubt theres any ammonium in there. While I am aware of the life cycle of Ich, I mostly use the visible white spots as a guide since i can't see the protozoan itself

 and the_lock_man, I really don't like adding extra chemicals to my tanks and since i've never had to use ich meds too actually get rid of it, i wanted to be cautious. I had never heard about the temp. and oxygen correlation, so i'll go ahead and throw in my airstone for the time being. I went ahead and added some new carbon to my filter as well as roughly a 50% water change. While i understand there very well could still be Ich in the tank, i don't see anymore spots today. So would adding a proper dose of aquarium salt help? As i would prefer avoiding more medications. My only other question is do I need to recycle my tank? I've been reading up on this and almost everyone says most Ich meds will destroy all the bacteria in the tank (Which would definitely contribute to my higher ammonia, since its normally at 0)

 

[Byron]

I normally stay out of disease threads as it is difficult to diagnose diseases and guessing is worse many times.  But ich is fairly easy to recognize, and I have battled with it a very few times over 20+ years.  I concur with lockman, forget so-called ich medications.  They can be quite dangerous.  The salt and raised temperature is the best treatment, and almost always the safest.  However, you need a dose of salt sufficient to work, or this will just add more stress without dealing with the ich.  Raising the temperature speeds up the ich cycle; some advocate that a temp around 90F will even kill ich without salt, I can't say.  Definitely increase water movement at the surface; sometimes lowering the water an inch or more will allow a "hose" effect from the filter, depending upon the type.  Airstones also help.
 
Do a major water change, around 70-75%, to get rid of whatever medication may still be present.  Raise the temp a bit with the replacement water, a couple degrees, and turn up the heater to bring the temperature up to 29C/84F.  The barbs will be OK with this for the week, let us know if other species are present.  The salt I would dose at 2g per litre, or to make measuring it a bit simpler, this works out roughly to one level teaspoon (= 6 grams) for every three litres.  Work out the water volume in the tank, remembering that substrate, wood, rock, etc displace water so a 20g for example will not hold 20 gallons but usually about 10-15% less.  What I like to do is calculate the volume above the substrate (there are calculators online to do this) and then sometimes a tad less just to be safe.  Add the salt once you work out the amount, and raise the temperature as I suggested above.  Maintain this for one full week, some will suggest two weeks.  If you do any water changes, add salt for the volume of replacement water.  When finished, do a water change of half the tank, continue normally.
 
Byron.

 

[WeslinCamden]

Awesome response, thanks! Sorry I didn't mention it earlier but, my tank has 11 cherry barbs, 3 false julii's, and a golden gourami. Yeah the first time i had ich a few years ago, I just did the higher temperature and salt treatment and it was cleared up in less than a week, but since this ich was spreading so dramatically i caved and went for meds. Unfortunately, a little while after adding the air stone, I noticed one of my females must have gotten it internally ( I believe she was one of the 3 barbs i added a few weeks ago, which im also pretty sure is the cause of the outbreak 

) as she couldn't handle the current at all, and died nearly an hour later...  

 but on a positive not; after adding in the air stone, carbon, some SafeStart bacteria and about 10 tablespoons of salt, all of the fish in the tank have already perked up dramatically. (My cory's have done fine in salt treatments before, but since i know they can be sensitive to it, i'll definitely keep an eye out!) I'll probably perform a 1/3 water change and salt every other day for at least a week, but for now it appears that my fish are starting to turn around.

 

[Byron]

Yes, there are salt-sensitive fish, some so much so that this is not a good treatment.  But I recently had an unknown protozoan/parasite and after months I finally got hold of Neale Monks and after a lot of question/answer on what had been done with what results, he suggested the salt as I've described above.  I had loaches and wild caught pencils in this tank, but I accepted his opinion that this level of salt would be fine here, and it sure was,
 
BTW, it should be aquarium salt.  Marine salt is not good, as this has other minerals and can cause real issues for soft water fish.  Plain kitchen salt that is sea salt with no additives he says can also work if aquarium salt is unavailable.
 
The turn-around is almost certainly due to the medication.  I have seen this myself with certain preparations.  As Neale said to me, the copper in most ich meds is far worse than salt on such fish.
 
Good luck.  Keep us posted.
 
Byron.

 

[the_lock_man]

For the information of those who don't know, Neale Monks is one of the worlds most respected aquarists.

 

[WeslinCamden]

So i have a pretty urgent update. The next day after paying close attention to my few barbs at the surface, they all had a white sheen to them. Combined with the lethargy, loss of appetite, staying at the surface or the bottom of the tank, I came to the conclusion that they had Velvet. So i continued the salt and heat treatment, but also covered the tank with a towel and didn't turn on the light. The past few mornings before work, I would lift up the towel and look around the tank. About 2 days ago, I found another female dead. This morning, I found a male dead (This time at the surface and some of his red was pale, didnt know if from death or flukes) as well as one of my females was EXTREMELY bloated and looked like she was pine-coning. 

 So today as soon as i got off work i went to Petsmart (The only pet store open this late) to get some meds. I started concluding that they had flukes (General symptoms, but at the surface, bloating as well as RAPID fin rot) Luckily the only experienced fish keeper was working at Petsmart tonight, and after explaining to him what happened, he suggested i get a fungal cure. He figured that the tail rot on some fish was due to infection from the ich invasion in skin. But im still weary on if the damage is from ich, velvet, flukes or fungal infection... There is just so many things going on with my barbs (None of my cories or my gourami experiencing any behavior or physical change) Only positive with all this is about half of my remaining barbs are becoming more active and even eating (Slightly) WHAT IS GOING ON?

http/imgur.com/IDE3wpq
One of my active females. Can kind of see red splotches on her underside. (This one and other one with obvious dropsy the only ones with the red so far)
 
http/imgur.com/FbV6FOm
The bottom one is the one with dropsy. Her tail fin is gone, and she has multiple red splotches on her belly. The 3 others are the other lethargic barbs left.
 
http/imgur.com/x1QNldZ
Best picture of the suspected "Velvet" i could get. 
 
So in conclusion the symptoms i'm seeing are rapid breathing, possible velvet on skin, staying at the surface or bottom of tank, loss of appetite, lethargy, rapid tail rot in some fish (Few with no or slow rot) and 2 fish with red splotches on abdomen. I know this is a large list of symptoms, but any advice?! Should I try the fungal? Or should I try something else?