"Glengoyne" wrote in message
oups.com...
Well I searched around this group, and found several different options
for treating the loaches for Ich. I ended up getting copper safe. I
used it at about half strength. I also added a bit of aquarium salt.
I'll see how that goes. I didn't look all that hard for feedback on
Maracide, but did find a good number of recomendations for copper safe.

I also had a epiphany as to how the loaches ended up with Ich. Just
last night we added a new fish. When I went to the LFS today to
purchase meds, I checked up and down their tanks. There were infected
fish everywhere. I went to the gal who sold me the fish yesterday, and
told her about my Ich outbreak, and pointed out that it obviously came
from their tank. She pretty much blew me off, saying there must have
been something else wrong with my loaches if they got the Ich, because
"Ich are almost always present after all, and only stressed fish will
be affected". I said that as long as they were going to continue to
sell fish to people, that they should at least warn them that it was
full of parasites. I said it loud enough that the people waiting in
line to buy fish heard it. I then asked if they would at least cover
the cost of the meds I had to buy. They wouldn't.


While I sympathize with your predicament, it's logistically impossible
for a retail outlet to provide a level of health which would preclude
doing some type of quarantine.

For information on loaches, I like loaches.com, but their disease
treatment section is completely anecdotal
http://www.loaches.com/copper.html

I'd normally favour Maracide over *any* copper based treatment, but
results and opinions vary. Interesting bit on Maracide's new formulation
http://www.loaches.com/maracide.html though I don't know if I'd agree
with the conclusion. Copper's toxicity to fish does not need to be
proven, so it's a case of whether the applied dosage is strong enough to
kill the parasites and not the fish.

Ordinarily, one of my best reference sites is
http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/ but I don't know if they have moved?
--
www.NetMax.tk