I had my 2 new guppies in QT until yesterday (I'd intended on leaving them longer but there was a problem with the filter in my tank).
I just got home and 1 guppy is nowhere to be seen, and neither is one of my neons AND I'm 90% sure my fish have ich

It's really hard to tell because they are small, fast tetras but at least 3 fish look like they have the characteristic white spots. Believe it or not this is the first time in my fish keeping 'career' that I've had this happen so advice would be good.

I have a 20 gallon, heavily planted tank with a penguine biowheel filter. There are various tetras, a few guppies and 4 cories. What is my best plan of attack? I hate to think that I may have to kill all the bacteria in the tank over this, but if I do I do, it was my own stupid mistake that caused this. Right now I only have salt and maracyn plus on hand but I can run to an lfs within the next couple of hours for extra meds.

Advice please!!!!!

I've been reading up as best I can...the lfs's are all closed so all I have for tonight is salt. But I'm afraid for my cories. Ideas/suggestions anyone???

Well this morning there's only 1 fish really showing spots for sure, one of my older neons.

Other than that I *think* I see scattered fish with a spot or two, but maybe it's just their scales reflecting the light and I'm being paranoid. But then again...there's still no sign of those 2 missing fish, I'm assuming they're dead. I'm going to get some ick meds today...but I still hope someone has a little advice for me

Chrissy, Im not real good on trops but I believe you can't use salt so you will need ich meds ASAP. Even if you just see one spot you have to treat for ich..could there have been more that have already dropped that you didn't notice previously?

If you mean fish than no, everyone is accounted for except the guppy and one tiny neon. I'm going to add the ick meds this afternoon (as soon as I get off school). The one fish showing a lot of spots has been looking a bit shabby for months, I think he's just very old now, so maybe he was more susceptable to it.

Stress coat and aquarium salt is about as good as it gets for curing ich without special chemicals. To cure w/ chemicals (90% of the time works) is using Quick Cure. It is bad for the fish over all but will cure ich and then you can do w/c and such and they will be fine. As I said, I only use Quck when I am desperate. Don't move the fish in there at all, it will transfer it to another tank. Ich is a parasite that fish always have. When the slimecoat is less and the fish is stressed it comes out of them. That causes the other fish to be stressed. I just wanted you to know that as well.

Thanks for the replies. I'll see what meds are at the lfs and choose what looks best. Are they going to crash my cycle?

Since you cannot use salt with neons for sure it sounds like you need the meds. they all contain malachite green or its derivative. the choice will probably between:

Coppersafe (Mardel)
Quickcure (Aq. pharm)
Super Ick cure (Jungle).

They're all pretty nasty to be honest but if you keep calm and follow all directions to the letter, they should work on the ich. You cant leave it and must act fast. Ich kills trops much faster than goldies.

All these meds will wipe your cycle. You need to remove plants and carbon.

(PS I meant do you think there were more trophant ich spots not fish dropping.)

All plants......
But I've gotta do what I've gotta do. Should I salt the plants or something as well, I'm assuming they could have the parasites as well.

Thanks again for the advice, I'm off to the lfs in an hour.

I just found the body of my neon and there were no signs of ick at all.
I also snapped a pic of the 'infected' neon, I'm wondering if maybe it's something other than ick? And btw, his gill has always been red, that's not disease.

Click to view attachment

As I said, Im not good with trops Chrissy but it kind of does look like ich to me, a little larger maybe but maybe thats the pic and the small size of the tetra. Hope someone else jumps in who has seen ich on a tetra but Id get the meds in meanwhile anyway. Parasites and their ravage are always worse than the cure.

Edit: Yes you can treat the plants with a bleach or salt treatment. The neon that died- ich parasites cannot live on a dead fish so they would have fallen off or died too.

Neons can stand salt if you treat it at half dose. I would try the non-chemical method first and if it still gets worse use the quick cure. To save your cycle, take the filter cartridge out and let float in a fishbowl or something with like snails or such to keep some ammonia in it.

I have had trops for longer than I've had goldies, and I am pretty certain that is ich. I do wish you could use salt instead of the meds though, as Trinket said...the meds are harsh and nasty although effective on ich.

Good luck Chrissy!

Thanks again. It was actually the cories I was worried about with regards to salting. I picked up the ich meds tonight but haven't added them, I would MUCH rather salt. The one neon is still the only one showing spots...

I have used salt at half dose with corys and they have done fine. Isolate the Neon if possible.

I'm wondering though if half dose will be strong enough to kill the ich and ich larvae. As Imogen said, ich kills tropicals much faster than goldies.

Ok, I'm salting the tank. Should I increase the temp?

What temp is it? 78degrees is a good temp to bring up to that is of course if your tank is not that warm already.

Ok, I think my tank is around 78 anyway. I'm going to add the salt. Thanks for the help everyone

Add extra stress coat. Raise the temp. to 80 as well. The higher the temp., the quicker the life cycle of ich occurs.

Chrissy. I tracked down an old post about treating tropicals with ich. It seems to be very important to halve the doses for tetras with commercial meds..as Kuli said- and of course keep salt only very low and very slowly added so I would seriously go very slow and half on ich meds too and see if that helps. Good luck!!!

I am pasting the post Touchofsky made on this below:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is some information on treating ich in tropicals. I copied this into my "medications" file since I thought it was well written.

Take note of the instructions for treating tetras. I hope this helps and please feel free to ask questions.



***** HOW TO TREAT ICH (THE IMPORTANT STUFF) *****

1. Check your water quality!!!!!! 9 times out of 10, the fish can
do fine with a few Ichthyophthirius in the water, but when they are
stressed by anything, like questionable water quality, it makes it much
easier for the little buggers to set up shop in your fish's skin.

2. Do a 50% water change, just to be safe.

3. Add 3 tsp of aquarium salt per gallon to your tank. This
reduces the osmotic stress on the fish caused by the invading organisms,
and may adversely affect the organism as well.

4. Pick up an ich medication of your choice at the local fish
mart. Most of the ones that are sold are more or less effective. My personal
favorite is a malachite green/formaldehyde combination sold under the brand
name "Quick Cure". ("RidIch" has the same ingredients.) Note: Most people
recommend halving the dose of Malachite-containing medications if you are
treating small catfish, any scaleless catfish, or tetras.

***** [b]5. DISREGARD THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THE BOTTLE!!!!! Use the DOSE
written on the bottle, but treat like this: Treat every 3 to 4 days for 4
treatments, changing 50% of the water before every treatment. Do NOT
treat once or twice, like the directions will tell you! You need to treat
over 12 to 16 days in order to get all the little guys when they are
vulnerable.

Thanks for that Trinket. I went on the side of caution last night and added only about a 1/3 dose of salt. This morning everything seems fine, they all made it through the night with no real changes.

I urgently need help and advice for a 55-gallon tank!

I currently have 7 Zebra Danios, 3 Pictus catfish, 1 Angel, 3 Neon Tetras, 2 Emerald Cory Catfish, 1 Albino Cory, 1 Peppered Cory, and 1 Bandit Cory, along with 3 Ghost Shrimp, in a tank that I started 10 days ago. Since then I have treated for fin rot and ich. I first noticed fin rot, then the ich. I treated for fin rot for about 5 days and then used Ick Away by Wardley Essentials for the ich.
However, my fish appear to be stressed and not getting better. What can I do do save as many as possible?

I put the following fish in the tank in the following order:

Over the course of about 5 days, I started with 5 Zebra Danios. I added 3 more two days later. Another two days later I completed my tank with 3 Pictus Catfish, 3 Angelfish and 3 Neon tetras ( that where moved from my 10 gallon tank).

Things were going well for about two days, when I saw that one of my Angelfish had fin rot. I treated with Melaflix in the tank to treat the fin rot one week ago on Saturday. It didn't get any better, and 2 Angels died since then. Then it looked like one of the Angelfish had ich too. I treated again for fin rot (replacing 25 percent of the water) because I was not sure that it was ich. Then I saw the Pictus were covered with ich. The fish store where I bought the Angels advised to drain out most of the water before treating for ich to avoid mixing the two medicines. I did and replaced 50 percent of the water 24 hours later. My Pictus appear to be stressed and one of my Emeralds is also showing a fuzzy white substance on his face. None of the Cory have ich, but the Tetras have ich.

Hi there
My advice for you would be to start an entirely new topic on this, and give as many details about your tank as possible (filter size, etc). Also, I don't know if you know about cycling or not, but since you're just starting your tank it has not cycled yet. You should test your water as soon as you can for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. I'll bet that at least one of them is high, and that can really stress your fish.