Ich and what to do fasstttt

Guber

It looks like one of my cherry barbs has ich. bunch of white spots on its body, and another has a little spot on his tail. Idk how long its been in my tank and i wont be able to go to the pet store at all until tomorrow afternoon...What should I do? I don't have a quarintine tank either

Guber

So I ended up doing some research and the lfs only had QuICK Cure by Aquarium Products...was told its good. It's active ingredients are Formalin and Malachite Green...It says don't use with inverts...will this stuff kill my snails? If so is there a way around this??

mollies

posible use half the dose. 24 hr after do a 25 percent water chang. make sure you read he directions twice.

Byron

That may save the snails but won't kill the ick. You need to maintain the dose for 5 days minimum, 7-10 is better. Somewhere on this forum you will probably find the explanation of the ich cycle and why this is necessary. Follow the instructions on the label of the medication.

Are they ordinary snails (pond snails, ramshorn or trumpet)? I haven't lost any of these even to copper-based ick medications. I no longer use copper-based remedis (affects the tetras and catfrish too much) and I've found Aquari-sol to be better; if you want to change from the API try Aquari-sol. There's also a product by Kordon called "Ich-Attack" that is organic, no copper or other stuff presumably.

Guber

I have malaysian trumpet snails in my tank.

Byron

They are good snails to have. As I said earlier, if you're really worried about the medicaton, Aquari-Sol and the Kordon's Ich-Attack do not kill snails, at least not mine.

Guber

Alright, I didn't get a very large bottle of the QuICK Cure...But I read up some more on it and people say it wont affect my snails either. So hopefully I'll be ok. The bottle says to use the treatment daily for 3 days...1 drop per gallon and 24 hours after the 3rd day do a 25% water change and put the carbon back in the filter.

I did take the carbon out btw...but i'm pretty sure i didn't get every tiny little chunk out...Will i still be ok? I got a vast majority of it out.

Byron

I've never used QuickCure so don't know how effective it may be, but I am a bit skeptical that it can rid the tank of ick in three days, especially if you do a water change which would obviously dilute the medication then in the tank water. I suggested in an earlier post that you track down the info on this forum about the disease, but in brief the parasite goes through three stages, the first when you see the white spots on the fish, the second when the cyst drops off the fish and sits on the bottom, and the third when the cyst ruptures and as many as 1000 zoospores swim in search of a host fish which they must attach to within 70 hours or they die. It is only during this third stage that the parasite is vulnerable to medication in the water. Treatment is generally recommended to last for a week at the least and more often 15 -20 days; Baensch/Rhiel (Aquarium Atlas, I) says the complete cycle can take as long as 20 days. Several recommend raising the tank temperature a bit, to 80-82F provided the fish can tolerate that, to speed up the life cycle of ick. With Aquari-sol I have treated a tank for five consecutive days, without raising the temp, and the spots did not subsequently re-appear in that tank so I assume it was killed off.

Perhaps others on this forum have had experience with QuickCure and can advise us. If three days is what the product recommends, you can do that and see. It is rare to lose a fish to ick, it takes time for the infection to advance to the stage where the parasites are so numerous they can actually kill the fish, so even if the three days wasn't enough and ick returned, you could then use something else. Keep a very close eye on the fish in the tank; it is odd that some fish seem never to get ick, while others are notorious for getting it at any opportunity (hatchetfish and clown loaches for instance).

Guber

Well it seems the fish that had ich spots all over its body died over last night. Sadly ;( the rest seem to be doing fine...going to finish the reccomended treatment though just in case.

Byron

If the fish died from ick it must have been very far advanced before you spotted it. Sometimes the spots can be difficult to see at first, depending upon where they are and the colour of the fish. I usually first spot them on the colourless fins where they are most noticeable. Velvet, a similar disease, is worse and more difficult to spot as the specks are very small, like a dusting more than individual spots. Keep the treatment up as recommended on the label, the ick cycle is a few days as I mentioned.