One proven way to treat ich/ick

[Gershom]

I am writing this because it is something that comes up so often.
Ich is a protozoal infection that afflicts fish and can rapidly kill them, most often by damaging gill tissue.
The organism goes through a life cycle of;
a small white spot feeding on your fish,
which drops off to the floor of your tank and encysts,
while encysted it divides into up to 2000 new mobile organisms,
the cyst ruptures, releasing the mobile organisms which seek out a host.
Only the mobile stage is vulnerable to treatment by anything that will not also kill your fish.

Here is an old fashioned but very effective method for treatment.
It can be used for most fish but morymids, corys, and some pims are sensitive to salt. Because the organism infest the tank, the whole tank should be treated.

Raise the temp of your tank to at least 85-86 degrees F.
Add aquarium salt (dissolved in water) at a ratio of 2 teaspoons of salt per gallon of water in your tank.
Now wait, while waiting it does not hurt to add a powerhead or airstone to increase the O2 level.
Over the first couple days your fish will look worse but then they will clear up. about the sixth day they will look clear but because some ecystments have not yet hatched keep the treatment up for the full 10 days.
If you are not able to raise the temperature you need to extend the treatment, at 85 the ich's life cycle is quick but at 72 it can take weeks, below 70F treat for 6 weeks.

There are medicines you can use but many fish are sensitive to them, you can also try just heat at 90-91 degrees F but some fish can't take that heat and some strains of ich can survive it.
The salt and heat method is one I have used several times with sucess.

This is interesting—considering the contrary opinion of a guy on Aquariumscience. I am very inclined to do as you suggest, but I am still uncertain about the diagnosis of ich (vs epistylis). I have 7 CA cichlids under 2 inches in a 29 hi at 77 degrees. Water is about 7.2 pH, 100-140 GH, low KH, nitrates about 40, nitrites and ammonia 0. I have a BOT, an in-tank sponge filter and an airstone. There are happy bamboos with roots in the water.
The RTAs all have moderate white spots but one of 3 red terrors is clean and another almost clean. Interesting , the RTs brought the disease home and gave it to the RTMs. (No quarantine —my fault ). I have been treating with an API ich remedy and no added heat for 10 days, without much change.
Any ideas?

 

[LBDave]

I have always used salt. It works without failure. Tank temperature does not need to be high. High temp only speeds up the ich life cycle to a degree. Temps at about 80 and you will see results in 3-5 days. I always use the salt for 10 days to 2 weeks.

 

[Gershom]

I have always used salt. It works without failure. Tank temperature does not need to be high. High temp only speeds up the ich life cycle to a degree. Temps at about 80 and you will see results in 3-5 days. I always use the salt for 10 days to 2 weeks.

Dave—
I tried salt for about a week and didn’t see any improvement. A couple days ago I got some Ich-x, and almost overnight some of the fish are looking better! (Coincidence maybe?). But I am not clear on how long to continue the ich-x (changing water and adding ich-x twice a day).

BTW, I bought Ich-x for salt water first by accident, and decided to use it anyway (LFS doesn’t sell ich-x although they use it themselves, and declined to give me a sample). So I researched it and the salt water type has formalin (same as freshwater) but doesn’t have malachite green. The SW type didn’t seem to help (but didn’t poison the fish).

Does anyone else use Ich-x for ich, and know how long to continue treating (80 degrees in a bare hospital tank, GH at 140, KH at 100, pH is 7.5, and doing 30% water changes twice a day)??

 

[LBDave]

You have to use enough salt. Otherwise it will fail to work. 3 lbs per 100 gallons. That's a lot of salt.
From our forum for treating Ich

 

[Gershom]

You have to use enough salt. Otherwise it will fail to work. 3 lbs per 100 gallons. That's a lot of salt.
From our forum for treating Ich

Wow —you are right—-I didn’t use that much. That sounds like 10% of seawater concentration.

 

[LBDave]

They can withstand more. The videos are interesting. Salt is safe but it will kill live plants.

 

[LBDave]

No chemicals can kill ich unless they are in the swimming stage (that's the short answer).
Treatments affect the osmotic pressure of the free swimming ich and they burst.
Any treatment that doesn't do this will not work.
You need to make sure all the ich is killed as the random parasites are at various stages of the life cycle.
So all the parasites need to get to the swimming phase.
So the short answer - full strength chemical treatment for 2 weeks. Must make sure full strength is maintained if doing water changes.

 

[LBDave]

Tip of the day - You cannot determine if the ich is eradicated on a fish by looking at the fish.
Only with close examination with a microscope.
So you just do full treatment.

 

[Gershom]

Dave, it does seem that my fish improving overnight with ich-x was a coincidence. They were improving because of the prior salt treatment, and the timing was coincidence. Next time (never, hopefully) I will go with salt! (I’m tempted to switch to salt now, but you know about changing horses in mid-stream…)
Thanks!