How do I treat white spot in a pond?

[Mvjnz]

Just found heaps of white spots on one of the goldfish. Other inhabitants in the pond are 4 zebra danios and another goldfish, and prolly lots of danio fry. They all seem fine.

So how do I treat them?

[W_Oz]

If they can handle the heat, crank the pond up to 86-89°F. Ich can't reproduce at that temp and do daily water changes. Keep this up for 10 days (iirc) then set everything back to "normal"

[Mvjnz]

The pond isn't heated and I can't put a heater in it. It'll have to be medication, just wondering the most practical way to do it. Take the one fish out and put in a seperate tank to medicate, take all of them out and treat them or just medicate the pond?

[CAllain]

From what I understand, whitespot lives in the water too, so you'd need to medicate the whole pond. If you only medicate the fish, then they'd just get infected again when you put them back in.

[Mvjnz]

Ok, was hoping I wouldn't have to as the medication is rather toxic and there's a lot of plants and things around the pond, and also a lot of native insects and toads in and around the pond. But I guess it needs to be done.

Thanks:)

[Halelorf]

Are you sure it is ich? Were the white spots all over the body or just located around the gill plates (opercle)? If it is just on the gill plate then it is more than likely breeding spots (tubercles) and you wouldn't have to treat the pond.

[Lady Hobbs]

Danios in a pond? What size is it? You'll need to treat whole pond if it's Ick.

[W_Oz]

your other option would be to remove all the fish in the pond to a holding tank for basically a couple months. Treat the fish in the holding tank and allow the Ick to burn itself out in the pond. Ick can't live without hosts, remove the hosts and the system will take care of itself.

Because the pond isn't heated you'll need to allow a longer incubation period for the cysts to "hatch". In a heated tank I'd wait 4 weeks before putting fish back in. In a coldwater pond, I have no idea how long that would take.

[Mvjnz]

THe pond is pretty warm, the water temp in the surface was 28 degrees yesterday.

The spots were on its fins and body, and it seemed pretty sick, hanging around the surface even in the heat.

I've decided to treat the whole pond. Even if I remove all the fish there will prolly be tiny danio fry in there which will allow the parasite to survive, so it'll need to be treated. It's not that big anyway, only 300 litres. Dunno what the people with HUGE ponds do when they get ich.

Thanks for your advice:)