# Ich in community aquarium with frogs, shrimp, snails and live plants



## ACC

Last night I discovered that several of my fish are infected with ich. It has affected my cardinal tetras and my neon dwarf rainbow. So far I can't see any visible signs of it on my cory cats, but I'm not able to get a good look at all of them as they like to hide under the plants. 

I have checked my water parameters and they are all good.

How can I treat the ich withought hurting some of the tank inhabitants? Corys, frogs, snails and shrimp are intolerant to salt and malachite green medications, so I could try just heat, but would that be sufficient? Also, can all my tank inhabitants handle much heat? 

I considered setting up a hospital tank, but I understand I still have to treat the aquarium as a whole to get rid of the ich, not just the affected fish. 

Thanks for any help you can give. I am very attached to everyone in my tank and was feeling so pleased to finally have it in such a stable, happy place. I blame the ich on the 5 new cardinal tetras I added to the tank last week without quarantining.

In my tank I have:

4 cory cats
2 African dwarf aquatic frogs
13 cardinal tetras
1 neon dwarf rainbow
many assassin snails
several cherry shrimp
live plants


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## Foxtail

Do you have a hospital tank? Raising the temp high helps but I don't know how your cories or frogs will handle that... 

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2


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## ACC

I can set up a hospital tank, but who do I move? Might the cories not already be infected with ich? 
I was thinking I could pull the frogs and the snails and put them in the hospital tank while I treat the main tank with salt, but that still leaves the cories and shrimp who might be vulnerable. I doubt I could catch all the shrimp to move them.


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## Steve

Assume everything is infected with ich. Are you sure malachite green won't work? I used it with cory's and snails and it was fine


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## ACC

Hmmm, maybe I will try Quick cure at a low dose then. It`s a bit worrying, but I`m not sure what else to do. Hopefully the shrimp will survive too.


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## Steve

You could always try different treatments in different tanks if you're worried about certain things getting affected by quick cure. I've never kept shrimp so I don't know how to treat them though. If your cory's are sterbai they can probably handle higher heats


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## mrbob

I used paragaurd at half strength for a week with same inhabitants with no problems move snails if possible mine survived except for one!
Not sure about shrimp move them if you can!!

Good luck


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## charles

If you have ich, don't use a hospital tank. No point to do that at all. You have to treat your whole tank.

If you want to be safe, use a UV unit. Then you don't need to use medication. Otherwise, use half dose of quick cure. Your plants or invert might not like it too much.


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## ACC

Okay, so after much anxiety I took the following steps to combat the ich:
set up a hospital tank
moved my shrimp, snails and frogs to the hospital tank
Treated the main tank (the planted tank with the fish in it) with quick cure at half strength.

I understand the ich can't live long without a fish host, so I think the hospital tank crew should be fine to move back into the main tank in a week or two. In retrospect, I'm thinking I should have moved the fish into the hospital tank and left the planted tank and the inverts & frogs alone, but I was worried about further stressing the fish. Hopefully the plants will make it.

Do you think I should raise the heat in the main tank much to speed the life cycle of the ich? I'm currently at 82 degrees. 
I know you're only supposed to use quick cure for three days. Is heat important to insure the meds catch the ich in the free swimming stage? I'm wondering how much heat my cories will tolerate though. Does anyone have an idea?


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## Master wilkins

I think 82 is fine, I personally wouldnt go too much higher than that. If you feel you need to, go slowly and monitor like crazy for any signs of stress.


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## Livyding

As long as you keep the water very well aerated there shouldn't be any problems gradually heating to 86...

Corys are not intolerant of salt, and shrimp can actually live and breed in low-mid range brackish water very happily. See here -->

_"Corydoras will handle the requisite low salinity -- about 2 g/litre -- just fine. Have done this many, many times and is FAR safer than copper or formalin. The idea Corydoras are "allergic" to salt is non-scientific and based on a total misunderstanding of how osmoregulation works. By contrast, copper and formalin are toxic to ALL fish, and while many species will tolerate short-term exposure, all are killed by misuse of these products.
Likewise, while all Corydoras (except C. sterbai) are best kept between 22-24 C/72-75 F, short-term exposure to 28-30 C/82-86 F will cause them no harm at all."_

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/fwsubwebindex/fwichremedyyes.htm

Compared to dangerous medications a bit of salt and some warmish water are nothing. Long term, yeah hot water would shorten their lives quite a bit, and they may not be exactly thrilled with it, but as long as you add an extra airstone or something I doubt that anybody will smother in the two weeks it takes.

The salt/heat method should always be the front line IMO... Although a lot of people say that you can use heat and no salt, and some say salt and no heat, I think it's safer to double up as long as you gradually increase salinity and heat..

I'm not so sure how well the plants, snails and frogs will respond to the salt/heat treatment though.


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## ACC

Well, four days of treatments later and I am down to one neon cardinal (still heavily infected) out of fourteen, one neon dwarf rainbow (still heavily infected) and all four of my cory cats. It's getting pretty sad fishing out all the dead fish every morning.

I am sure I handled this outbreak badly and am full of self-recrimination. I wish I had spotted the ich sooner and taken action. I also wish I could have got the meds in sooner. It took me almost a day to set up the extra tank, buy the equipment I needed and pull the inverts and frogs. Also, I only dosed a half dose the first day (as the bottle suggests for tetras), and I think that allowed the ich to get a further hold. The pet store people told me not to do the half dose as the ich kills the fish faster than the meds, but I didn't listen. For the next three days I did 3/4 dose, because I just didn't know who to listen to.

So now here I am with a nearly empty tank. I've given up on the rainbow and the cardinals, but I'm hoping the cories will survive. In retrospect, I probably should have pulled them from the tank and put them in with the frogs, shrimp and snails in the little tank I set up since they showed no sign of ich. Instead, I've subjected them to four days of malachite green. They show no sign of ich, but they seem a little wasted and very sluggish (of course, I wouldn't be swimming around much either if I had to constantly circumnavigate dead tank mates).

At this stage, I'm wondering how best to save them. Should I pull them now and put them in the other tank? Should I just keep going and continue medicating the tank hoping that they'll make it and that the rainbow and cardinal might still be saved? When do I do a water change? 

The good news at this stage is that the lone shrimp I was unable to catch and remove to the invert tank seems to be really enjoying the malachite green! He's swimming around, eating algae and seemingly having a lovely time. Go figure. 
Also, the frogs are really enjoying the smaller tank and have been singing day and night. Yesterday I caught them in a tight embrace too, so maybe they're even mating. Perhaps I should just give up on fish.


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## Tazzy_toon

Sorry to hear that things aren't working out so well for you, i too am dealing with Ich in my tank, but i only have cardinal tetras and 2 kuhli's in the tank, i have been using Kordon Rid Ich for 3 days full strength water change every day and today no spots on the fish, I'm feeding them frozen foods and their colors have brightened considerably. I raised the temp to just 80 and have done nothing else. It's always trickier with shrimp and scaless fish though. Hope things get better for you. Just try to chalk it up to a learning experience (although a hard one) and do the best you can with what you got at the moment. ( Just recently I learned the hard way that it's better to live with BBA then to use excel at full strength and kill all my shrimps  ) Anyways good luck to you.


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## ACC

I'm glad you mentioned your BBA story. Before this disaster struck, BBA was my biggest aquarium worry. In fact, I decided to dose my tank with excel to encourage plant growth and out-compete the BBA. I accidentally overdosed the Excel. The label is very confusing talking about half a cap-full. I thought they meant the cap that comes with the bottle, but they meant the actual bottle cap, so I dosed way too heavy even though I thought I was being very careful and under-dosing. The result was all my snails hung out at the top of the tank for three days and no one else seemed very happy. The BBA is WAY reduced though! This was all completely accidental and I realize now I'm really lucky my tankmates all survived intact.

I'm glad your ich story has a happier ending than mine. I'll do a water change tonight. The cardinal and rainbow are still alive right now. Maybe they'll be survivors after all.


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## Daryl

For what it's worth I have had good success with Jungle Ick Guard II. It's safe for loaches and other scaleless fish. Apparently.
What I can say is that it worked fine with my pleco's and cories. The only cories I lost during the last 10 or so days of treatment (during which I upped the temp to 86* and treated with the meds twice) were eaten by my Geo's.


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## ACC

Does anyone know how long ich treatments should be continued? I have been treating my tank at 2/3 dose of quick cure for 8 days now. All my cardinals have died, but the rainbow lives on. The thing is, he still has all his cysts. The cories still show no sign of ich, though I understand they could have it on their gills. Can I expect it to take much longer for the cysts to fall off so I can start winding down the treatment?


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## Tazzy_toon

I don't know much on the subject except what i've done myself this past bout for myself, but I upped the temp to 80, 25% water change/gravel vac every day before treating with Rid Ich. It was only a mild infection as each fish only had 1 or 2 visible cysts, within 3 days, no visible cysts and I treated 5 more days. I've uprooted all my poor plants and they are not too happy with me, but no ich and no losses. I have Kuhli loaches, cardinal tetras and guppy fry. It should tell you on the bottle how long to treat for.


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## ACC

Hmm, I've had the tank at 83 since I started (8 days ago) but maybe it's time to raise it another degree. Maybe I just need to get the ich life cycle going faster.


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