Ick Cures?

[Yankee]

Hi
I have fish infected with ick. I've treated the tank with the fizz tabs and it had no effect.
What is the most effective cure?
Should I give the tank another dose of tabs. If so how long do you go between treatments?
One more question. If I take all the fish out of the tank does the ick live in the tank? If so how long?
Thanks

[cocoa_pleco]

temp up to 80f, and that one drop ick cure is good.

Ich is in EVERYONES tank unless you have a u.v steriliser. Ich is not a problem until the fish is stressed, then it can attatch to the fish, and the adults fall off after a day, and all your fish will get it.

Isolate the sick one, 80f temperature, and one drop cure

If all your fish have it, Treat the whole tank

[Severus]

I have had great experiences with Quickcure. Temp to like 80-82 and i treat for 10 days. Has worked well the two times i have used it

[Chrona]

Yeah, make sure to use the medications for a week at the very least though. Some companies will recommend up to 3 weeks. The point is that the medication can only kill the parasites when they are in their free floating stage, so you technically have to wait for one life cycle of ich for the parasite to burrow back out of the host and into the water before it dies. The extra time is to make sure you kill everything, so a resistant strain doesn't develop.

[cocoa_pleco]

yeah, treat for 2 weeks to kill all the parisites

[*Sarah*]

This is great info for when I'll have to deal with this. Hopefully it'll be a LONG time before I'll have to though!

[Severus]

Yea, ick first sprung up on me about 4 months into my tanks life

[cocoa_pleco]

ive just had a celestial goldfish and loach with ich, like 3 years ago. Since, no ich at all

[*Sarah*]

Years ago when we had our tank set up, we got ich and the whole tank died :( Of course we only had the LFS ppl to talk to, and they were idiots at that store. I'm so glad I know so much more now, and this forum is so great to get advice too.

[Yankee]

So when you say treat for 10 days/ two weeks are you medicating dayly or not doing water changes or what?
I understand to leave charcoal out of the filter system but I'm unclear about what you mean about treating. Does the medications have useful instructions on them?

[cocoa_pleco]

leave out carbon, treat for 1 week, 60% water change after 1 week, add more medicine

[cocoa_pleco]

if done right, icks easy to treat on 1 fish

[kimmers318]

Along with a method of treatment you need to identify why your fish succumbed to ICK, which BTW, seems to be one of the most prevalent forms of disease aquariums deal with, esp. new aquariums.
What size tank, what filter, how many fish, were any of these fish added recently, what is your water change schedule? Is this a new tank and is it cycled?
Second, there are a lot of medications out there for ICK, quick cure seems to be one that is recommended frequently, follow the directions on the label if you choose to go the med route and then watch your water parameters because some meds can kill off your good bacteria.
My personal route when I have seen ICK is to start with a large water change, hike the temp slowly up to around 84, the higher temps speed up the ICK cycle, and dose the whole tank with stresscoat at 1 squirt per gallon, squirting directly on any fish that you can coax up to the top of the tank. Dose the tank daily until you don't see any outward signs of ICK on your fish with small daily or every other day water changes, being careful not to disturb the gravel too much and clean all of your good bacteria out of it. Once you don't see any outward signs continue to leave the temp up for around 2 weeks and continue with your regular water change schedule. If you see any more ICK on your fish stresscoat them again, but the 2 times I have dealt with this I have not seen them come back after the initial loss of visible signs. The stresscoat helps your fish's body naturally fight off this invader and gives them a natural defense. It will not harm your biological filter and you cannot overdose it, it will not harm your fish in any way.
Good luck

[Lady Hobbs]

The tabs tell you 25% water change between re-treating. QuikCure works the best (so everyone says) and kills within 2 days.

Ick is not killed while visible on the fish but after dropping off. You can read here about the life cycle.

[Only Registered Users Can See Links.]

[sergo]

good reading there Hobbs, thanks.

[Sasquatch]

I don't know the name of the medication, but the treatment we use for ick had Malachite Green as the active ingredient. Follow the directions, remove the carbon and treat for at least a 10 days.

We had it once in our current tank and it was recurent in our previous tank. We always treated with Malachite Green and it worked.

I'd also recommend going the Stresscoat route while treating because ick is a surface parasite and when it burrows out of the fish, it leaves a small wound. This can lead to infections, so Stresscoat will help reduce those problems.

Best of luck and don't worry, just about every aquarist has had this problem.