Return Of White Spots

[Teacher Martyn]

Hello,

I've been treating whitespot with Protazin and have dosed, as instructed, on Days 1, 2, 3 and today was the final one, day 6.

I dosed the tank this morning and have come home to white spots again on (only) my glowlights.

What do I do now?

Martyn

 

[Teacher Martyn]

Anyone, please.

I really don't know what I should do for the best.

Just start another regime of treatment?

Do a water change before starting another treatment?

Change to another medicine?

I'm just a bit confused as I thought that today's stage in the life cycle would not see spots appearing again. I thought the cysts were water borne at this stage.

 

[sadguppy]

Have you raised the temperature to 30 degrees and added salt? That worked for me.

Additionally you could remove any with visible spots to a different tank and treat them there. I know you should treat the whole tank but it cannot hurt.

 

[Teacher Martyn]

Thank you for the reply.

What sort of salt?

I had raised the temperature but then, after dosing for the 'last' time, I began to take it back down again.

 

[sadguppy]

Aquarium salt; most lfs have it including pets at home.

Follow the instructions on it, a teaspoon per gallon I think but please check! Loaches or cories get a half dose as they don't like it as much. The heat needs to stay at 30 for about a week til all the parasites are dead.

Good luck!

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

I did not change the water in my Ich tank until "day 13" after the start of its Protozin course, to give the meds time to kill the Ich free-swimmers.

 

[Scales9]

It took almost 2 weeks for the last spots to fall off my fish, I just treated with heat and salt with daily water changes after the course of meds did not do its job, it is such a pain in the neck to treat as you can't kill it till it falls off the fish into the water, unfortunately all you can do is keep treating as I have found with all things in fish keeping time and patients and hard work and you will get through it.

 

[alihar]

I didn't change water til day 13 either.
I finished the course as per instructions and then continued treatment with a half dose of protozin on days 8,9 and 10

 

[Teacher Martyn]

Thank you everyone.

So, from all of that I guess I will do the following...

1) Continue with course of Protazin after waiting a day or two.

2) Not change the water.

3) Raise temp back up (albeit in stages)

4) Add aquarium salt.

Martyn

 

[sadguppy]

Once you are done with the meds and start adding salt and heat, changing the water can only help. Gravel vacs will suck up anything that happens to be lurking in the substrate and keeping the water tip top by adding clean fresh water will help the other fish to resist the parasite.

 

[KISSfn]

Took me about 16 days in my battle with Ich.

 

[OldMan47]

Ich treatment guidance.
Never stop treatment until the last of your fish has been free of the parasites for several days. I use salt, plain old table salt will work but I tend to use sea salt instead. What you need to understand is that the ich parasite lives through 3 phases. One that we often see is when it is on the skin of our fish and it looks like so many individual grains of salt. When the parasite on the fish matures it breaks free and falls to the substrate. It lives its next bit in the substrate, for a day or two only. After that it becomes free swimming and looks for a new host to infest to repeat the cycle. Only in this last stage can we kill it with our treatments. Where that leaves us is in the position of treating our water to kill off the free swimming stage and thus prevent a re-infestation. We raise our tank temperatures to speed up the life cycle and use a treatment to kill the free swimming stage so that it cannot re-infest our fish. If we miss even one free swimming parasite, we get to start all over again because one or more fish become infested with the parasites. Unfortunately that is where you have found yourself. Somehow a parasite survived and has infested a fish again. It is now showing up as a white spot on your fish. From my point of view, you are now back at the beginning of a treatment. Never back away from a treatment until that last spot has been gone for a few days.

 

[Teacher Martyn]

Thanks for all the replies. I was initially worried that my post was being overlooked as 'yet another ich post'.

I'm not particularly inexperienced but was unclear about quite where I was in the life-cycle of the parasite and how that impacted on continued treatment.

In addition, although more than happy to go on treating, I was worried about poisoning the fish.

I will set about starting treatment again today and keep the water tip-top.