# Treating ich in planted tank with inverts - recommendations?



## Lutefisk

I recently had some aggression issues among my head and tail light tetras, culminating in damage to the caudal peduncle of one of my big females. I've been monitoring he situation for two weeks. The wound site looked healthy, the fish wasn't being harassed, and it looked like everything was fine until last night, when I noticed white spots at the wound site, on that fish's eyes, and on the fins of a couple other head and tail lights. 

Looks like ich to me, but please let me know if white raised dots on otherwise clear eyes are diagnostic of something else. My stock includes the following:

Plants: various crypts, rotala, ludwigia, java moss, fissidens, riccia, java fern, anubias, subwassertang, Monte Carlo

Inverts: ramshorn snails, assassin snails, nerite snail, a few shrimps

Fishes: head and tail light tetras, bleeding heart tetras, otocinclus, apisto borellii, peacock gudgeon, galaxy rasbora

Water params: 0 ammonia/nitrite, always >10ppm nitrate, pH 7.2, KH/GH ~3 deg., temp 24C

Can I safely heat and moderately salt? Am I stuck using meds that claim to be invert-safe like kordon's ich attack? I'd love to hear any experience you have heating or treating these livestock. 

Thanks!


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## charles

If it is just starting, increasing heat will speed up the ich cycle. If you don't like to use med., add an UV will help big time.


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## Lutefisk

Thanks for the tip, Charles! I imagine the South American fishes will all handle the temperature increase, but what about the gudgeons and galaxies?


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## charles

I am sure the galaxies is fine. However, the gudgeons will not like the higher temperature. If it is ich, you need to treat your whole tank. You don't have to increase the temperature. It is just faster. Ich cycles with increase temperature will be around 3-4 days. Without the higher temperature, my guess is 7-9 days. The only time to kill the ich is when it falls off the body of the fish. My advise is if you are worry about the goby, keep the temperature, put an uv on 24/7. 

One good thing is, without changing anything, your other fish are not going to be stress out. Ich will not attach easily. Then the UV will take care of the floating one since they can't attach to healthy fish.


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## Lutefisk

I got home, did a substrate vacuum, then found some Kordon Ich-Attack in my inherited medicine cabinet (thanks, Jamit!). I'm going to try that and heat for the time being, and look into getting a UV sterilizer if I don't see some progress. Thanks again, Charles, for the advice.


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## Lutefisk

Update: I'm at 29-30 degrees (heater struggles to reach 30C if windows are left open at night; my fail-safe to not cook my fish in case of heater failure works!), and all the fish seem OK, although the adult peacock gudgeons are acting sluggish. No worsening of condition, and even some apparent improvement. Heavy aeration keeps the water oxygenated.

I've run out of Ich-Attack (none for sale at any LFS--if members want to sell some, I'd sure appreciate it!), and have moved on to feeding NLS TheraA+garlic pellets impregnated with metronidazole. The water column is dosed with PraziPro, in case ich is not the only problem. Inverts and plants are all fine. The ick symptoms are still restricted to the HTLs. I can't figure out what would be stressing them more than any other fish, unless it's conspecific aggression.

Thoughts? Anyone think I'm making a big mistake by doing this instead of just ponying up the cash for a UV sterilizer, as Charles suggested?


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## outsider

If you add salt in the tank water you probably don't need uv sterilizer isn't it? The whole purpose to add salt is kill ich in the water. I dunno how much salt you have added in the water. I have 1/2 tea spoon/gallon of api aquairum salt for my 45 gallon and I follow the same rule when I do water change. My tank is also planted tank with Java fern, 3 different type of crypts, tropica's dwarf hair grass, limnophila sessiliflora and rotala wallichii and they seem fine with the salt I have in my tank. (OK my rotala wallichii is green instead pink but that most likely due to not enough light.) For live stock I have Galaxy, Harlequin rasbora, Neon, black neon, green neon, cardinal and rummy nose tetra, peacock goby, freshwater neon goby, otocinclus, albino cory, pygmy cory, 1 siamese algae eater, 1 nerite snasil, 2 red cherry shrimps and they are fine with the tank water as well.

Claire of Aquarium west told me in her experience what works best with ich is a lot of salt and she said I may be able to get away with double dosage. (Two of my galaxies were sick and I think it is ich. (hard to see the white dot on the galaxy) I treated them with seachem paraguard. One fully recovered while the other died. Not sure if that one was too sick to eat but I did switch from seachem paraguard to ich-x and that galaxy died couple days later. =/)


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## Fishy_Addiction

Not to steal the thread or anything, but I'm dealing with this too (I think) however raising the temperature is not an option. 

What products are good to use? So far a single neon and my snail has ich on it maybe one of my BNPs. My eye sight is so bad though.


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## outsider

I believe inverts such as snail and shrimp are safe from ich, however they can carry ich spore with them.

I use seache paraguard to treat my galaxy. However it is best you move fish to small qt tank because it is expensive if you dose large tank. (You have to treat the tank for about 2 to 3 weeks.) You have to treat the main tank even you move fish to qt tank because main tank will have ich spore in the water.

Aquarium salt seems to be best way and you have to make sure you fish eat. The dead galaxy did eat much while the other one that recovered ate.


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## Fishy_Addiction

Well, I'm glad my new snail is only carrying it. Was beating myself up (not litterally) thinking I brought him into an infected tank and now he has ich. I got him today and did not realize it until I was waiting for everyone else to be ready to leave and sat down and watched the new snail do his snailiness. -_- noticed the one tetra had ich. I get back home and look again... well crap my snail has white spots too. I also think I saw some on one of the bnps but still can't confirm. Fast forward back from swimming two of three adfs have a dot or two as well. 

Sorry I know it isn't my thread. I'm just crawling with anxiety at the moment. Never had ich in my life. Dx

Luckily (kind of don't get me wrong I would love a big tank lol.) I have a 10 gal. May have to do my 2.5 as well because I used some water from the tank to top up. Nothing on my girl yet though. However, I don't know if this is in response to OP or me. xD if this is the case please disregard.


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## outsider

Claire of Aquarium west told me ich is basically cold/flu to fish. If your fish is stress free and they should be safe. Seachem paraguard and stressguard are basically have same ingredient but with different percentage. The idea is create slime coat for the fish to prevent them be infested by the ich (fish lose their slime coat when they under stress.) while get rid of one in the water. You also have to remove carbon filter if you use any medicine. (Carbon is kind useless anyway and it usually only last for a month)


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## Fishy_Addiction

That makes sense. I have been moving things in the tank around a lot because I first got new driftwood and plant, plus my adds uprooted my watersprite (I'm admitting defeat with this plant. Plant 1 Me 0), so I was picking out all I could. At this point there was no ich, I only added 6 (bnp and adf) and they had no ich when purchased. 

Anyways...! 

How much does Paraguay and stress guard cost?


What would you suggest to use as a media?


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## outsider

Fishy_Addiction said:


> That makes sense. I have been moving things in the tank around a lot because I first got new driftwood and plant, plus my adds uprooted my watersprite (I'm admitting defeat with this plant. Plant 1 Me 0), so I was picking out all I could. At this point there was no ich, I only added 6 (bnp and adf) and they had no ich when purchased.
> 
> Anyways...!
> 
> How much does Paraguay and stress guard cost?
> 
> What would you suggest to use as a media?


If you have ich you will need to use paraguard as well since stress guard is mean to use when you add new fish. Evne they are the same thing paraguard is stronger if you already have ich.

It depends where you buy it. Aquarium West sell 250ml bottle stress guard for something like 17.50 dollars. I can't remember how much is paraguard but i think more expensive than stress guard. (1 cap for 10 gallon of water, so it will be expensive for 2 to 3 week treament if you do it in large tank.) I don't think King ED has it, however I think J&L has larger bottle.


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## Fishy_Addiction

Well I have the stress guard completely forgot about the paragaurd.

I only have a 10gal.

I won't be able to get out to Langley until next week so if there is member that has some for sale close to Cloverdale send me a message.


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## outsider

I think if you have stress guard you can use it to protect you other fish in the tank while allow the sick neon tetra to recover from ich. As long as the fish is eating than it should be fine.


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