Stress and Ich?

[trisha1972]

Our power went off for about five hours night before last. I have a 55 gallon tank of gouramis with a pair of dalmations and two pictus in it. I noticed yesterday that the female dalmation wasn't looking too good. She's dead today. I also noticed some white specks on my gold gourami and on my other dalmation. I did a 30% water change, added 4 tbs of aquarium salt and ich medicine (ich away?).

Did the stress of the power being out cause the outbreak? Do I need to do anything else to keep the fish healthy at this point?

 

[freddyk]

It's very possible the poweroutage caused it, especially since the tank has been healthy and free of stress up to this point (right?), and nothing else was recently added that could have introduced it.

At this point you should be running plenty of aeration while you medicate, no carbon in the filters. All you can really do otherwise is wait for them to recover.

 

[tttnjfttt]

One other thing you need to keep an eye on is your ammonia and nitrIte levels. The power outage could have caused some of the beneficial bacteria to die off, sending your tank into a mini-cycle.

Test your water and make sure the ammonia and nitrIte are both zero.