How to lower pH

Norbert

And people often add bio balls to aquarium which will hold good bacteria in there .
I wonder why it's so important to have it since you will have good bacteria in water anyway, ofcourse you can say that changing water will get rid of them but I don't think anybody change 100% of water.

Only chemistry will kill it (as mentioned above) but even then your water will go through bio balls with chemistry so everything will be killed anyway.


I personally have bio balls and I see that as a waste of space.

Byron

Might be a bit of confusion here. Bacteria lives on surfaces, not in water; it forms what is called a bio film because it is very sticky and it will attach to any hard surface under water. The more surface area, the more bacteria can live there, which is why filter media like bio balls are used. Porous rock like the bio max and lava rock also is very porous. The aquarium substrate is too, which is why more bacteria live in the substrate than elsewhere. So changing water does not affect the bacteria, and it is relatively difficult to dislodge them just with water. You can read more here:
http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/f...quarium-74891/

Norbert

You have answer to everything

Norbert

I did as you told and increased temperature on saturday (midnight) and didn't help within 7 days. I left it for another 4 days (till today -wednesday midnight).
My oldest clown loach has lots of white spots. I have two small ones too, one is literally covered in spots but he's ok so far but I'm mostly concerned about second small one. He has few white spots and he's acting strange. He's lieying down in foregrown on plants and other strange places (never did that befor) and I wouldn't mind if that would be night time but not in middle of feeding or when it's afternoon.Also he has red gills
Basically he's really bad and it's second day like that....he's eating but not much and I don't think he'll keep like this for long.

I changed water like you wrote just didn't do that today yet (will get to it after you'll answer).

So anyway it's been 11 days and all fish are ok apart from clown loaches, it doesn't come off.

What should I do ?

Byron

This may well not work. As I wrote previously, clown loach get ich bad, very bad, for reasons I don't think anyone really knows. But they are one of a few species that are highly prone to ich. And what makes this even worse is that being scaleless they are highly sensitive to any medications, chemicals, etc. Everyone I have ever read suggests treatment for loaches be half-strength because of this sensitivity. Which is why I suggested CopperSafe which is a milder treatment than other products.

I would be tempted to raise the temp to 90F. For a week or even two this should be tolerable to the loach. However, you have other fish in this tank that will not do well at such high temperatures.

Given this scenario, my action would be to divide the fish. Do you have another tank? The best solution would be to move the two loach to a separate tank, it could be a 5g even for this, and then raise the temp to 90F and see what happens. If this can be done, I woudl even hesitate to use CopperSafe, as the high temp should deal with ich. And the fish would have less stress without the CS.

Byron.

Norbert

Yeah, I have seperate tank ( 10 litres) - with platys but they can be put into bigg one and threat those clown loaches in seperate tank.

Byron

This may be the best. Follow what I outlined previously.

The tank the loaches are now in of course has ich, but with them removed you can use CopperSafe at the 85F temperature for another week and this should deal with the ich in there. I trust none of the other fish are showing stress like the loaches are?

Norbert

No, only clown loaches though sometimes I've seen other fish rubbing against plants etc (no visible changes)

As you said it's because of different fish in tank. I don't think Red tail sharks (2 ) are in this point issue , mostly that would be Danio (one is really crazy and chase everybody)
A week ago before they had this white spot I planted aqua (had few plants but now I have loads).
This took me few hours to do and I think that's a major reason.
Apart from that danios and sharks are lot calmer (probably cos of well planted aqua).

Norbert

There might be a bit of confusion in here about Copper Safe.
I thought that this treatment is only to remove copper and when I just read on website it's removing parasites and bacterials including Ich.

I believe I've mentioned about using chemistry to remove chlorine and copper (that thing which apparently has good bacteria in it) but it doesn't remove any bad bacteria and parasites. It would be similiar to using Accu Clear which clears water (although it will work better).

In effect I left those loaches in big tank ( I couldn't fish it up) and I think it'll be better for all fish since some might have just a little of ich. I used half a dose as labeled.

I've also plugged in airation (white spot threatment removes oxygen from tank) It's called Interpet Anti-White Spot.


We'll see how it goes from there....

Norbert

Did you used Interpet Anti-White Spot before?
If it's bad choice then I'll look for Copper Safe unless it's a good choice.