I have had my tank for 2 months and it has been doing alright. I got a bad case of ick and have been treating that for weeks now. I keep losing fish and it never seems to go away totally. The numbers have been great all along except this morning i noticed the nitrites are in the pale pink zone which on my testing strips says caution. I have done water changes of about 25% every week when I vaccum the tank. I have taken the filters out when treating with the rid ick yet my blue gourami has ick now day 2 of the medicine. How do i get the nitrite level back to white? I have a 26 gallon tank tetratec P150 filter with mates of a blue gourami a red flame gourami the following have been int he tank since week 3 , three fat belly guppies and one guppy male + two chinese algae eaters . Any help would be grately appreciated.
nitrite level ick etec
- Thread starter jolaf
- Start date
mattbeau
Fish Crazy
jolaf said:
for emergencies you might find the emergency threads might come up with better results, and there is a good amount of info in the pinned topics about ick
The nitrite increase could be caused by the meds killing the bacteria, I had the same problem waaaaay back when I first started
good luck
kat and james
Fishaholic
we recently got rid of a really bad bought of ich, we used WS3, by King British which did the trick eventually, we had to add coral gravel to bring the pH back up, as it dropped and the medicine wasn't working properly. we were also advised to increase the temperature to above 80, as this sped up the life cycle of the ich, this also helped a great deal... our ich lasted for almost 3 weeks 
, but we only lost 2 little ones 
the only thing we can suggest for the nitrite problem is do another water change, but replace the water with pre-conditioned water!
good luck!!
, but we only lost 2 little ones the only thing we can suggest for the nitrite problem is do another water change, but replace the water with pre-conditioned water!
good luck!!
Thank you that is what I thought but needed reaasurance 
kat and james said:we recently got rid of a really bad bought of ich, we used WS3, by King British which did the trick eventually, we had to add coral gravel to bring the pH back up, as it dropped and the medicine wasn't working properly. we were also advised to increase the temperature to above 80, as this sped up the life cycle of the ich, this also helped a great deal... our ich lasted for almost 3 weeks
the only thing we can suggest for the nitrite problem is do another water change, but replace the water with pre-conditioned water!
good luck!!
[snapback]897960[/snapback]
kat and james
Fishaholic
you are very welcome! good luck!
I think that probably because u remove ur filter. Even during treatment it is suggest u leave ur filter even the medicine might kill some of ur filter's bacteria. with out ur filter ur tank = ammonia zone. And missing of either one bacteria ur tank soon r full with either nitrite or ammonia. To deal with ich you dont really need medicine at all. Heat treatment tend to do alot better then medicine in my opinion. Slowly raise ur temperature to 86 for a few weeks and during 3-4 days per water change to take out parasite ur tank will soon recover from ich.
Fortunately, I have never with Ich but I do know that you need to leave your filter system intact except that you need to remove the carbon. Carbon will remove the medication from the water and prevent it from helping. By removing your filter (or filter pack I assume) you are killing off all your bacteria so the tank has to recycle every time. You will have to keep doing water changes to keep the ammonia and nitrite levels down.
I do know that to treat Ich, you need to raise the tank temp. Do it slowly over 5 to 7 days until you get it to around 82-83 degrees. Here is a pinned topic from the Emergency section that should be of nelp.
I do know that to treat Ich, you need to raise the tank temp. Do it slowly over 5 to 7 days until you get it to around 82-83 degrees. Here is a pinned topic from the Emergency section that should be of nelp.
fish_keeper2
I am Nemo!!
raising temp to 86+ does help bu i have yet to read that it has been proven to kill ich alone. i would use meds just to be on the safe side. if your worried about it use it at half strength.i find that rid-ich(if avaible to you) does a really good job.
kat and james
Fishaholic
increasing the temperature doesn't kill ich per se, it just speeds up it's life cycle, which basically results in it going faster than if you kept your tank at a lower temperature. however the plants really don't like temperatures this high, and will tend to go brown and start to die, it's probably best if you remove any sensitive plants, plants such as java fern should be fine in the tank at these heightened temperatures!
I didn't mean that raising the temp alone would get rid of ich. Sorry it may have come across that way. As I said, I have been fortunate enough that I haven't had to battle it yet. That's why I included the link to the pinned topics since I have no experience with it.
voo
Fish Herder
Hmmm... i looked at the date on the first post and saw Sept 5.. then had to check the date on my computer... still August.... then started wondering how it had been posted in the future??? Then saw it was 2005!!!
Why bring up such an old topic? I think the case of ich would have gone by now... it has been a year after all.
Why bring up such an old topic? I think the case of ich would have gone by now... it has been a year after all.
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