Yuk Ick

Heat does seem to help in my exp., But it probably wont be enough to get rid of it completely. Ich attack is safe for plants and inverts if you can get some, little pricy tho. Best thing is to have a 5 or 10 gallon quarantine/hospital tank that u can use medications and or salt in. I bet there is a ton of info in these forums as well if you would do a search.

heat alone has worked for me in the past. I've also used a small amount of salt in some instances and the plants were fine, but i didn't put in much at all.

The heat method has works really well for me as well. I turned up the temp to around 85 and kept it there for at least 2 weeks.

UV and heat would even be better.

I'll give the heat a try before I dump in chemicals. My filter has a built in UV so that is taken care of. How much salt, I have a 55g? Should I remove the fish to another tank to do this. I'm thinking the protozoa are in this tank, moving the fish to another tank will help them but when I bring them back to the main tank they will be exposed again. So shouldn't I leave them in the main tank to be treated?

Thanks for all the help.

Sundance2010 said:

I'll give the heat a try before I dump in chemicals. My filter has a built in UV so that is taken care of. How much salt, I have a 55g? Should I remove the fish to another tank to do this. I'm thinking the protozoa are in this tank, moving the fish to another tank will help them but when I bring them back to the main tank they will be exposed again. So shouldn't I leave them in the main tank to be treated?

Thanks for all the help.

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I would suggest treating the whole tank if you're doing the heat method. If one fish got it, all of them are exposed already, so I would go ahead and treat the whole tank. I'm not so sure about the salt, never tried it. Hopefully someone else will pitch in.

I've used up to 1 tbsp per gallon in nonplanted tanks + heat to treat ich successfully.

I've used 1 tspn per gallon in planted tanks as a general remedy without hurting the plants.

You don't have to use expensive marine salt, just use pickling salt from the grocery store. Its the same price as regular salt but it is noniodized and doesn't have any anti caking agents in it. It is pure NaCl. You can also still use it for eating and cooking so I always have it laying around.

Kosher salt is also uniodized but it does have anticaking agents which will cloud the water for a little bit.

"It has been found that Ich does not infect new fish at 29.4°C/85°F (Johnson, 1976), stops reproducing at 30°C/86°F (Dr. Nick St. Erne, DVM, pers. comm.), and dies at 32°C/89.5°F (Meyer, 1984)."

Bump your water up to at least 82 (84 preferably) and see how they do. IME, don't even bother with any of the salts/chemicals. The temperature method works the best.

Franco said:

You don't have to use expensive marine salt,

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I have a saltwater aquarium as well so I already have that to use.

Thanks for all the help in this matter, will let you know in a couple of weeks how it's going.

Should I be using stress coat as well to help with the healing?

I've had success with raising the heat and Ich Attack ,as mentioned by JshineTX84, in my planted tank. Ich Attack is actually 100% herbal. They usually have it at Petco/Petsmart. http://www.novalek.com/kordon/ich_attack/index.htm

It took a little longer to get rid of it than when I used salt/heat, but I didn't want to risk the salt with my plants. I also did gravel vacs every couple days or so, to get some of the other nasties out that you can't see. Here is the life cycle of Ich and some other info....http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=16+2160&aid=2421.

Just be sure whatever treatment you do, to continue with it for about 5 days after you see the last spot to be sure they are all gone. You may not see it on your fish, but it may still be in the tank.

Is the increase of temp. going to effect the CO2 demand? Does it increase the metabolism of the plants there by increasing the need for CO2? I noticed my drop checker went to blue since rising the temp.


update:
It appears that the Reaction canister filter will not supply enough water flow to keep the CO2 at the correct level I have a CO2 reactor in line). Seems my HOB filler does a better job than this canister filter. That does not make me very happy.