Is This White Spot/ick/ich?

[bliss_OG]

One of my rainbow fish has tiny white spots on his/her tail and fins, I hope from these pics you will be able to help me work out if he/she is ill and will infect the rest of my fish. In my 250 litre tank there are 4 rainbow fish, 5 black skirt tetras, 5 rummy nose tetras, 4 ottos, 2 guppies (I can't seem to keep any others than these) and 1 rainbow shark (he is the most timid fish I have ever seen completely different to what people told me he would be like). The rainbow fish are only juveniles and a few inches in length which is why they aren't very colourful.

Heeeeeeeeellllpppppppp!!!

My photos are too large to upload so heres a flickr link http/www.flickr.com/photos/78458866@N02/7190648394/in/photostream

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

Looks like the dreaded Ich to me, in which case you need to treat the whole tank rather than quarantining just the heavily infected fish.

Get yourself some Waterlife Protozin, steadily raise the temperature towards 30C over a couple of days (as in don't just whck the heater thermostat up, I did this with my outbreak several months ago and the higher temp with reduced oxygen levels despite heavy rippling pushed my Synodontis decora youngster group over the edge, keep an eye out for highly stressed fish at the water surface). I suspect that salt is not an option because of the Otos, hopefully others will chime in.

 

[Scales9]

Looks like ich

. This will infect everybody in your tank as the parasite itself lives in water. While they are feeding ( attached to your fish ) it is hard to kill them, so you treat the water rather than the fish itself, Heat will quicken the life cycle of the parasite so you will need to start turning your heater up gradually over the course of a day or two at least to 80, my tank was at 84 last time I treated for ich. You can either use medication or salt to kill the parasites in the water, a daily gravel vac would also be bennificial to remove any of the parasite before they start to multiply. You should treat for at least 4 days AFTER the last spot has gone from your fish.

 

[bliss_OG]

Ok, but won't raising the temperature hurt my.fish? Right now the temp is 26c (79f). Also, how did this thing get into my fish?

 

[Scales9]

Ok, but won't raising the temperature hurt my.fish? Right now the temp is 26c (79f). Also, how did this thing get into my fish?

Raising the temp will make your fish a little unhappy but should be fine as long as you do it slowly, if you have a bubbler increase the speed of the bubbles as the high temp can cause the oxigen in the water to deplete. My fish got it when I introduced new fish without quarenteening them first.

 

[bliss_OG]

I have turned the bubbles off like I do every night and added some bacterial treatment, which was probably pointless considering ich is a parasite, right? Anyway, I switched my filter to the oxygenating mode and I turned the temperature up to almost 27. I.don't understand how it just appeared, I have never seen any spots or experienced ick in all the years I kept fish. However these are my first set of tropical fish and I have to say it's not going very well, fin rot, ick, random deaths, I can only think tropical fish are weaker than coldwater and subtropical.

 

[bliss_OG]

I can only see a few of my fish and the ones I can see don't look well at all

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

Adding "random" medication is dangerous, for instance if you added Myxazin and Protozin to a tank in a short space of time, you can poison the fish by giving them an overdose of an overlapping compound (malachite green I think without looking it up). Go and get yourself a bottle of Protozin and double check the ingredients of it against the anti-bacterial medication you added last night before dosing "day 1" Protozin.