Treating ich?

[Sean]

I was looking at one of my tanks tonight, and noticed some very small white dots on a couple of my fish, not many maybe 4 dots and 2 or 3 fish have them. I'm not sure if it's ich but if it is I would like to start treating early. I have a bunch of ich meds laying around, so is it ok to do a small dose just in case it is ich, or will it have bad effects if it really isn't ich?

[Regalblue]

I'd use the temperature raising & salt method of treatment,  since you're not sure.

[Ron]

If you do use meds, I'd suggest using them only in proper doses. No sense in either wasting them or helping to create a med-resistant form of ich.

[Sean]

Ok, ill start raising the temp and adding salt. Thanks

[linuxrulesusa]

Ok, ill start raising the temp and adding salt. Thanks

You probably know this, but I usually raise the temp to 84-86 to be most effective at killing ich.  And, if you have un-scaled fish like loaches or certain catfish in the same tank, keep an eye on them if you add salt, because they're reported to not tolerate salt well. 

[Maize-N-Blue-D]

IMO the best remedy is raising the temp and adding salt as many other have suggested, BUT if you do decide to use the meds, you must remove any charcoal from you filters first...

[Sean]

I do have some synos in there so I will pull them out and put them in another tank while I salt and raise the temp.

[Ron]

I do have some synos in there so I will pull them out and put them in another tank while I salt and raise the temp.

You wouldn't be worried about introducing ich into a new tank doing that?

[linuxrulesusa]

I do have some synos in there so I will pull them out and put them in another tank while I salt and raise the temp.

You wouldn't be worried about introducing ich into a new tank doing that?

Ron, do you think the synos would be OK if he salts the tank?  What ratio of salt do you guys use?

For what it's worth, I don't use salt (except in my brackish tanks) and I just raise the heat and that has always solved ich for me, if I caught the infection in time.  Once or twice after a trip I came home and some fish were too far gone so I had to euthanize them, but the rest recovered just fine.

[Ron]

I do have some synos in there so I will pull them out and put them in another tank while I salt and raise the temp.

You wouldn't be worried about introducing ich into a new tank doing that?

Ron, do you think the synos would be OK if he salts the tank?  What ratio of salt do you guys use?

I'm not sure about salting the synos simply because I don't exactly how much is suggested for use these days. I also never really had steady results using salt and personally only use meds for ich. For thin-skinned fish like catfish, loaches, etc, most (if not all) meds suggest cutting the applied dose in half because such fish are more easily affected by the medication themselves. All I can say about salt is that I've used 1tbs of salt (Instant Ocean) per 5 gallons before on tanks with S. eupterus and common plecos, all of which were fine.

[Steve]

Sadly I have had to treat for ich twice in the past year and I have four 5" Syno Multi cats in the 55g I had to treat. I treated with 2 table spoons of salt per 10 gallons of water and my syno cats were perfectly fine both times I treated. I also have a trio of 5" clown loaches in that tank and they were fine as well.

If you do the salt and raised temp treatment then be sure to add some air stones to the tank to help with oxy while the temp is raised.

[Sean]

Just did all of this. Thanks for te advice. I will see how It goes

[Steve]

Let us know how it works out bud, I hope it works well. My last ich treatment round did not end well sadly. Hope yours works better.

[Sean]

I saw that post. Sorry to hear that. Hopefully if it is ich I caught it fast enough

[Johnnyhigh5]

I have found that ich is a more of an effect to a larger problem. Water quality.  I say that because ich is in all tanks, and it's when fish get stressed and lose their slim coat that they get ich. Like when people go to a pet store, and buy new fish come home and put them in their tank that hasn't been cleaned in a few weeks. The fish gets ich, and then like normal, blame the store.