Questions About Ich

[Jozlyn]

Ok, I think I have Ich in my tank, see my freak out in TFE! Have spent hours this afternoon reading everything I can find about it, symptoms, treatments etc. But now I'm confused.

After spending 3 solid hours watching my tank last night only one of the new fish is itchy, rubbing against rocks and things. I can't see any white spots on it (I don't know if it's a he or a she yet!) yet. I thought one of my other fish was doing it too (which is why I panicked about how fast it spreads) when I was watching the tank on Tuesday night but he didn't scratch at all during the time I was watching last night.

Now I did read somewhere that amonia can cause fish to flick, but my amonia level is 0, so it can't be that.

So back to Ich being the culprit. And now the questions on the information I've read but found to be a bit unclear.

Snails, I have two, should I move them out before begining the treatment, something I read somewhere today said that it was bad for them, but it didn't say to move them out and it also didn't say whether or not they'd have the Ich bugs on them, if they do and I put them in my other tank then I'm just going to infect the other tank as well, right? So move them or not?

It says to increase the tank's water temperature to 30C before adding the medication to get the lifecycle going, but for how long before adding the medication? How long does it take for them to move from unkillable first stage to killable second stage?

Water change? Should I do my regular water change before adding the medication or leave the water alone until after I've finished giving the medications?

I know, lots of questions, but I want to make sure I get this right and fix the problem as quickly as possible.

 

[Puffdaddy]

I think you will have better luck in the emergencies section Wilder is great help over there.

 

[Bignose]

First and formost, you need to know whether it is ich or not. Because you have to pick the right medicine for the right problem. Many other issues could be causing scratching/flicking. Nitrite is one cause, with higher ammonia and/or nitrate levels lesser causes. But, many other parasites could also cause flicking. Ich, velvet. When my fish had gill flukes, they would scratch then, too. So, flukes could also be the cause. You especially don't want to medicate unneccessarily if the tank is cycled since a lot of the medicines will destroy your cycling bacteria colony.

But, assuming that it is ich:

1) anything in the tank should now be considered a carrier for ich. If you want to remove something, it should either completely dry out (ich cannot survive being dried out) like a net or decorations. Or, it needs to sit in a completely fish-free tank for several days. 7-8 days at tropical temperatures, 30-40 days at cold temperatures. The reason is ich is a fish-only parasite. If it does not have fish to parasitize, it will die. So, if you want to remove those snails, they need to go into a fish free quarantine/holding tank. There cannot be any fish in that tank, because the snails may be carriers and infect the other fish. The snails will not get ich, though, since they are not fish. Many of the medicines used for ich will be deadly for the snails, read the labels to learn more.

2) The raise in temperature is sort of your choice. One the one hand, a raise in temperature will speed ich's progress through its lifecycle. But on the other hand, warmer water holds less oxygen, and a lot of the medications use oxygen to perform their medicinal purposes, the water could be really low in oxygen levels. The speed up in ich's lifecycle is fairly small too. At regular tropical temperatures one entire lifecycle if 3-4 days. Higher temps may get that to like 2 1/2, maybe 2 days. But, it's not a lot of speed up in my opinion. Either way, slowly increase the temp over several hours. I.e. every hour as you walk by increase the heater 1/2 to 1 degree.

3) Re: "How long does it take for them to move from unkillable first stage to killable second stage?" This doesn't really matter, since the entire population of ich will have organism in all of their stages. Ich's population is just like people, there are always infants, teenagers, middle aged people, and elderly people. In the same way, there will be some ich that is vulnerable and some ich that isn't. Ich's vulnerable state can be thought of like human's teenage state. In the entire lifecycle, there is only a small window there in which ich is vulnerable. Some small percentage of ich will always be in the vulnerable state. That is why it is critical not to miss a dosage and to plan them out so you can do each dose exactly on schedule. Also, to help this, waterchanges help because a lot of the ich medicines work by oxidizing organic material. (Which is why oxygen levels will be low.) Now, the medicine is pretty indiscriminate about what organic material it oxidizes -- it does all of it -- fish tissues, ich, bacteria, decaying matter in the tank, everything. The trick to this is that as a lower life form, ich dies much more quickly from having its tissues oxidized than a fish does. But, since it is indiscriminate, you don't want the medication doing its work on decaying matter or missed food or any other organic junk in the tank. That is why a good thorough cleaning before medication can help a lot -- the cleaning takes up a lot of that junk that the medicine would otherwise be wasted on. You want that out so that as much medicine as possible would be used on the ich. When you are done medicating, use several large water changes to dilute the medication out and carbon to take out the rest -- be sure to throw that carbon out soon after you are done.

 

[Jozlyn]

Well now I'm wondering if it really is Ich. I spent more time watching the tank last night and I was up early this morning after having a host of nightmares (but not about fish!) so I sat and watched them again with my cuppa.

The only fish rubbing/scratching/flicking is the Ram, no one else, if it was Ich it would'be spread to the other fish by now (it's been five days) and some should be showing signs and the Ram should have some white spots by now, which it doesn't.

It's definately not amonia or nitrite as they're both 0, don't know the nitrate as I'm still waiting for the LFS to get the test kit, it's been several months, now that I think about it. There's plenty of oxygen as I have 3 air stones in there pumping out plenty of bubbles.

So now I guess I start researching all the other potential causes.

Would a dose of Melafix help?