ich on my new clown loaches

[Roop]

sigh. i got 3 a couple days ago, all about 1.5". one is perfectly fine and hangs out with the others. one has slight ich (few spots) and the other has it a bit worse (20+ spots).

tank is currently at 75. i changed the thermostat on the heater to 82-84. i have a $.99 bottle of "aquari-sol" ich treatment. i remember using this before and it was very good.

i have two goals: keeping it off the other fish and keeping the new fish alive. so far other than the two loaches, everyone is fine.

any other advise?

[420Loach]

sounds like your doing good already just watch to make sure no other fish show signs of it, and try to see if the two infected ones get worse or better.

[Roop]

i gave them their first treatment yesterday. didn't help. today i gave them the second treatment and got the temps up.

i purchased them for $14 each. today i go to a different petstore and see 3 of them for $21. crud. i have as many as i would want to put in this tank.


one thing - the tank is usually mid 70's. it's now low-mid 80's with the thermostat changed from 74°F to 84°F. all other fish are fine. i have 14+ cories, 12+ grown merigold swords, 20 sword fry (.25" each) and a nice pleco.



that fish store also gave me a sterbai with a partially developed tail. the back fin is about 30-40% smaller than the other guys. phyiscally everything else is the same. hopefully he is able to grow his tail back and live normally. the other guys are very active, this one isn't.

[Roop]

damn, it's getting worse, however, the ich has no spread to the older fishes and the guys that have it seem more active. they are all schooling together now.

temps hit 85°F so i turned the thermostat down to 82°F.

i added another dose of aquarisol. i got this stuff a year ago. it doesn't have an expiration date but doesn't seem to do much.

i have another bottle here labled:

front:
cure ick in 2 days!
QuICK Cure
a fast, effective cure for tropical fish pariste infestations like ick, ect.

made by AP aqaurium products

main ingredients are formalin and malacite green. it says 1 drop per galon. i will start using this tomorrow if it gets worse.

i was also thinking of salting the tank. i have normal atble salt. how much to use on a 55-60gal tank?

[Roop]

i also added a dose of melafix. this stuff isn't really for killing things like malacite green, but it has made sick fish happier in teh past.

i'm starting to get a bit worried now so if anyone else wants to jump in an add something, don't be shy.

[subgang]

Add 1 teaspoon/gallon of aquarium salt, don't use table salt. Then gradually add more salt until you have 2 teaspoon/gallon. Best to separate into a small hospital tank if you only have 1 sick fish. Petsmart has a 1-gallon with light and UGF for $22....

[JWright]

Hmmm...it's impossible to cure ich in 2 days, the absolute minimum is 5-6 days, since that is the life cycle of the parasite (which is immune to treatment while it is in its cyst stage (the litte whit spots on the fish)). Follow the prescribed treatment, and be patient. You usually have to treat for a couple weeks to be sure you kill it, and you _won't_ see results right away.

I don't reccomend full-blown salt treatment for scaleless loaches (they don't tend to deal well with salt), but adding a little wouldn't hurt. Table salt is just fine.

~Josh

[Lotus]

I found this article very useful for understanding ich http://www.peteducation.com/article....articleid=2421

And this one about treating ich on loaches http://www.wheelpost.com/Ichfish.html

We had a similar problem a while back. After 5 days of using Maricide (basically the same thing as Aquarisol) we saw more spots and more fish with ich.

We cleared out the meds (water change and carbon filter) and switched to CopperSafe. Having read about some people's experiences online (especially at www.loaches.com), we added 1/4 dose every 3 hours until we got to full dose, just to make sure the meds weren't harming the loaches. We also made sure to take off the volume of gravel/plants/decorations from the total volume of the tank when calculating the dose of meds.

The ich began clearing within 2 days, although took a while to finally leave. The parasites can apparently stay dormant on a fish for a few weeks. Strangely enough, although our tank was at a fairly high temp, the ich didn't seem to go through its cycle any faster.

We are still trying to work out what stressed the fish into getting ich, although it's kind of hard to pin down. I know it certainly stressed us out having fish with ich.

This is just what we did. Some people say to use the salt/heat method, and it has worked for them. Our loaches certainly had it worse than other fish in the tank, and that worried us hugely.

Good luck in getting them back to full health.

[420Loach]

DONT USE IT!!! it has malacite green, which is more harmful to clown loaches, i forgot to mention to stop the filtration.

i bought a 10 gallon from walmart for about 10 bucks to use as a hospital tank, works great. the hardest part of having it is keeping it empty hehehehe

[Roop]

thanks for the input guys. i will not use the malacite green.

i actually did have a ten gallon sick tank. my fish were all really good for the longest time so i decided to sell it at a yard sale. i used the money for some computer parts or something.

i may have no choice. if this problem lingers until next week, i'll get a sick tank and use it for growing snails and plants.

i'll countinue with the aruari-sol and a water change/vacuum everyday.

my male molley had a swim bladder infection. he was swimming vertically for a while. i know cucumber is good for that. in 2 days he's swimming horizontally again! he's not 100% but much better than yesterday. i thought yesterday that he'd be a floater but now i think he'll be just fine.

loaches: one guy is really good with only 1 or 2 spots. the other guy has a couple dozen, no more and the last has about 3-4 dozen. it definatley looks like the parasite is in the stage where it's falling off into the water now. i have no time right now but tonight when i get home i'm gonna do a good vacuum and 30% water change.

the tank also looks a bit cloudy which it hasn't since i set it up. i put a new filter cartridge in there, melafix and a couple doses of aquari-sol. any one of those could have done it... or the cucumber.

i'll monitor the tank and see how it goes. thanks for the input guys. i'll keep you posted.