First let me say that, my tank contracted a case of ICK, most likely from a Rainbow Shark we bought from PetsMart. Being a newbie at this I had nbo idea what ICK looked like or how to treat it, my sharks started dying one by one I had 8 total 5 rainbow 3 albino rainbow.
we took the dead fish along with a water sample back to PetsMart and trhey replaced the fish..several times, eventually it started spreading to my Silver Mollies...then my Sunset Platty's... we had bought an Elephant Nose from Petco and he died the very next day along with a fish from Petsmart... When we took the fish back to PetsMart and got our money back (At this point we were so frustrated that we were considering giving up the hobby, we had several fish die over the course of a week and a half)
We took the Elephant nose back to Petco and the lady there said he was infected with ICK... so we started treating the tank with Quick Cure... Kept treating and treating as directed until half of the bottle was gone...
at that point did a 90% water change carefully vacuumed all of the gravel Changed the filter cartidges, soaked ALL of our Tank decor in the bathtub in bleach water, threw away ALL of our live plants out everything back in and treated the tank again...and again...and again and the ICK remained... we tried Copper Safe the ICK remained we tried the Jungle Ick tank mate tablets used al of them still the ick lived.
Our fish had ICK so bad that one of our Sharks developed Pop-Eye from it0
FINALLY we talked to a person who doesn't use any chemicals in his tank. He said the best way to kill it was to raise the the temperature to 84 Degrees, Add some salt and lower the PH to a slightly acidic state I used 6.6.
Apparently Parasites can not live in water in this condition.
within 1 day the Shark no longer had Pop - Eye, the next day our fish were started scraping up against obects... up from just lying on the bottom. Now 2 1/2 days later our fish are acting normal again.
I think we have finally beaten the ICK. My Chinease Algea-eaters are kind of lethargic... but I'm expecting them to return to normal when I lower the temperature of the water below 79 which is more to their liking.
anyway I just thought I would share this experience and hopeflly save someone else a lot of headaches..dead fish and wasted money.
we took the dead fish along with a water sample back to PetsMart and trhey replaced the fish..several times, eventually it started spreading to my Silver Mollies...then my Sunset Platty's... we had bought an Elephant Nose from Petco and he died the very next day along with a fish from Petsmart... When we took the fish back to PetsMart and got our money back (At this point we were so frustrated that we were considering giving up the hobby, we had several fish die over the course of a week and a half)
We took the Elephant nose back to Petco and the lady there said he was infected with ICK... so we started treating the tank with Quick Cure... Kept treating and treating as directed until half of the bottle was gone...
at that point did a 90% water change carefully vacuumed all of the gravel Changed the filter cartidges, soaked ALL of our Tank decor in the bathtub in bleach water, threw away ALL of our live plants out everything back in and treated the tank again...and again...and again and the ICK remained... we tried Copper Safe the ICK remained we tried the Jungle Ick tank mate tablets used al of them still the ick lived.
Our fish had ICK so bad that one of our Sharks developed Pop-Eye from it0
FINALLY we talked to a person who doesn't use any chemicals in his tank. He said the best way to kill it was to raise the the temperature to 84 Degrees, Add some salt and lower the PH to a slightly acidic state I used 6.6.
Apparently Parasites can not live in water in this condition.
within 1 day the Shark no longer had Pop - Eye, the next day our fish were started scraping up against obects... up from just lying on the bottom. Now 2 1/2 days later our fish are acting normal again.
I think we have finally beaten the ICK. My Chinease Algea-eaters are kind of lethargic... but I'm expecting them to return to normal when I lower the temperature of the water below 79 which is more to their liking.
anyway I just thought I would share this experience and hopeflly save someone else a lot of headaches..dead fish and wasted money.