treating ICH

[dishmando]

Just got back from my LFS, picked up some ich meds. I was told to increase water temp to 85 degrees to aid the healing process. Now, what got me was that the guy behind the counter(and im not trying to put anyone down here), but he told me to follow the directions on the bottle. Fine. The bottle says remove all activated carbon from your filter...No prob....but.....he told me i dont have to put it back in my Eheim 2213 after treatments done with.

Why not?

I also have a Penguin 350 which i'll be removing the catridges from.(and he suggested replacing with new when treatments done with)

Anyhow, why would he suggest, or tell me i dont "really" have to put the carbon pad back in the Eheim?.....

[Chrona]

Treat ich for 10 days with the dosage on the meds, then put the carbon back in. Not sure why he would have told you otherwise, unless you have live plants.

[dishmando]

no live plants, all plastic with a piece of driftwood.

anyhow, just cleaned out my 2213, kinda nervous at first, but alls done. Another question, i rinsed the bioballs and the blue/white filter pads. What i thought i read somewhere is if you do this with your filter, you lose alot of your biological filter.


Is this true?

Am i in a sense starting the cycle over again?....... i hope not!:confused:

[Chrona]

no live plants, all plastic with a piece of driftwood.

anyhow, just cleaned out my 2213, kinda nervous at first, but alls done. Another question, i rinsed the bioballs and the blue/white filter pads. What i thought i read somewhere is if you do this with your filter, you lose alot of your biological filter.


Is this true?

Am i in a sense starting the cycle over again?....... i hope not!:confused:

Did you wash them with tank water or warm dechlorinated water? They didn't get wet did they? You are supposed to wash them out from time to time because they do clog, but only like 1/2 at a time I believe. You may see a small ammonia spike. I would wait for the ich to go away before doing anything else.

[dishmando]

I washed them out in my laundry tub.....................no issues so far. (thank god!!)

as for my ich treatment, im 3 days in and im noticing a big improvement on my clown loach.
Question now, do i finish the one bottle of meds and thats it, or do i keep continuing buying them(meds) until i see no trace of ich on any of the fish?....(its mainly on my loach anyhow)

[Chrona]

I washed them out in my laundry tub.....................no issues so far. (thank god!!)

as for my ich treatment, im 3 days in and im noticing a big improvement on my clown loach.
Question now, do i finish the one bottle of meds and thats it, or do i keep continuing buying them(meds) until i see no trace of ich on any of the fish?....(its mainly on my loach anyhow)

Er, in my last post, I meant to say that you shouldn't let bioballs dry out, not wet lol.

Treatment times should continue for a week minimum, 10 days preferably, so the ich goes through several life cycles and you are certain you killed all the free floating ones.

[dishmando]

cool! thanks Chrona.............i'll have to go buy another bottle or two tonight.
Should it not be visible on any fish to know ich has been treated properly?, orrrrr, will the remaining spots eventually fall off?

I must say, they've reduced in size dramatically. Great improvement so far.

[Lady Hobbs]

Just use as directed. Some of the meds work pretty fast. The raising of the temps will promote the ICK to go thru their stage faster but I don't feel 85 degrees is necessary. 82 maybe but 85 is pushing it.

He probably told you to not return the carbon to your filter because not everyone uses carbon or feels it's necessary other than for removing meds.

[Chrona]

cool! thanks Chrona.............i'll have to go buy another bottle or two tonight.
Should it not be visible on any fish to know ich has been treated properly?, orrrrr, will the remaining spots eventually fall off?

I must say, they've reduced in size dramatically. Great improvement so far.

The white spots fall off and release new parasites that enter the water in search of new hosts. If they infect a host, they burrow under the scales and are immune to all forms of medications. It's only in the free-swimming stage that they can be killed. Note that if the parasite doesn't find a host withint 2-3 days, it dies, which is why quarantine works so well against ich.

[dishmando]

Too bad the bottle doesnt tell you about how long to continue treating.
Im thinking i should use 1 more though. It only seems to have affected my loach and maybe 1 of my glass cats. I say maybe, because when i bought the pair of cats, one always had a white speck on him.
Kinda pisses me off that i didnt notice the speck when i bought them, cuz i would have requested a different one.
Soooo, either he brought ich to my tank or just a defect on the side of him. I wont know until i finish the meds.