Discus has ich??

ReefTrooper

Hi every one. i just noticed this morning that my new discus has a white spot on his fin . i raised the temp to 30 degrees Celsius and put some medication in. I will wait until tommorrow and see if it goes away. anything else i have to do?
thanks.

brokenrules69

i have never been hit with ich luckily (kock on wood)
but all of my aquarist friends say raising the temp and add a bit of fresh garlic and the ich is gone! with out adding man made chemicals to the fishs environment

ReefTrooper

thanks a lot for the info the garlic thing is new to me. i would be very interested if someone could tell me how to use it?

MinaMinaMina

Know your enemy:
Ich | The Skeptical Aquarist

MinaMinaMina

Also...
Ich doesn't happen for "no reason". There is something that is stressing the fish to make them susceptible to illness. Be sure to get the the root cause of it to make sure you're preventing future outbreaks.
How is your water quality? Levels of Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate? pH? How often are you doing water changes to get the wastes and hormones out? How much water do you change at a time?
Which kinds/how many of each kind of plants do you have?
Do your old tank water parameters match the new water parameters at PWC time?
Are you heavily stocked or overstocked? (The answer is overstocked, 137% according to AqAdvisor.)
Is there aggression in the tank causing stress? (The answer is yes, see below.)
Do you have incompatibilites in temperature, pH, hardness, and activity levels? (Yes.)

Agression- With even ONE Red Tailed Shark, the aggression will be high, much less TWO of them! Just one needs a 4 foot tank, and to be alone. This speciies is way too aggressive to be in this tank, and way WAY too aggressive to be with Discus! Your dwarf cichlids will also become aggressive when they start to breed, and don't have enough of a footprint to have enough territories. If your Discus or Scalare Angelfish pair, then that's a whole 'nother level of aggression on top of everything else.

AqAdvisor* sums up some of your problems pretty well: AqAdvisor - Timothy 1998 cremer

This tank does not have enough room for Angels OR Discus, much less both (and in the proper quantities)! The Angels are too much for the Discus, they can't live well together. The different species in your tank have different temperature needs that don't over lap (e.g less than 78 degress F for the Bolivian Ram, more than 80 degrees F for the Blue Ram). You have soft, acidic water fish AND hard, basic water fish. This tank is too short for Discus and Angels. Your shoal numbers are too small on Discus, Scalare Angelfish, Neon Tetra, possibly others but you have no room to expand their numbers.

There's more, but what I'm trying to illustrate here is that, if you don't resolve some of these issues, Ich will certainly not be the last of your problems. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but, for the welfare of your fish and saving you future strife, this tank needs an overhaul badly.

*Not that I think that AqAdvisor is the end-all, be-all... but it is certainly a helpful tool.

ReefTrooper

yeah im sorry i didn't edit my tank in a long time i removed most of my fish as for plants i have 5-6 bunches of cabomba, a few baby java ferns,a huge amazon sword,some small amazon swords,a vallisneria.

ReefTrooper

could someone please help it seems to be getting a bit worse

GwenInNM

Mina offered some great suggestions. I do remember your posts about all those fish you had in a small tank. I'd be more specific to get help. What type of meds did you add? It may get worse before it gets better. Did you raise your temps up to 86 degrees or above? I know that Discus can handle that temp, but you should tell us what other fish are in that tank. Never heard of the garlic. Have heard of salt, but if you've already added meds, don't add anything else.

You've got yourself some very sensitive fish, and you need to address the possible causes for getting ich, after you get this fixed.

If I remember your Discus are in a 30 gal? Too small for that fish or angelfish.

Gwen

afremont

Ick doesn't go away overnight. You can't do much about the spots while they are on the fish, you can only speed up the life cycle to try and get them off and onto their next stage of life. You can only kill ick in the "free swimming" stage. A temperature of >86F should end the infection of fish and lead to the eventual demise of all the ick creatures since they can't survive more than about 48 hours as free swimmers if they don't infect a fish. Follow the link and read the article about ick. What particular ick medicine did you use?

ReefTrooper

Yeah i removed most my fish before the ick came in. i am treating with ridall anti ich