Battling ICK on clown loach

My 10G tank has been home to 2 small clown loaches, 2 guppies, and 2
neons for about 6 months now. I got tired of scraping algae off the
inside of the tank every few weeks so I bought a very small Pleco.
The tank looked great for about a week and then I started to see ick
on the 2 clowns on Friday.

I slowly raised the tank temp up to 85 degrees, added 2 tblsp of Doc
Wellfish Aquarium salt, and added a half-dose of Quick Cure
(formalin/malachite green) and a half dose of Maracyn II (anti
bacterial for secondary infections). I noticed that when I raised the
water temp the water got cloudy. Why is that? My water is usually
very clear.

I added a second half dose of Quick Cure on Sunday. I tested PH,
ammonia, Nitrate, and Nitrite. PH was 6.8, ammonia close to zero,
Nitrate and Nitrite were a little elevated, but not near dangerous
levels. I planned to change water on the next day.

On Monday I used a gravel vac to change about 30% of the water making
sure that the water I put back in was the same 85 degrees. I use a
Brita filter to clean the water before I put it in the tank. I added
a teaspoon of salt, another half-dose of Quick cure, and another
half-dose of Maracyn II.

Today (Tuesday) I looked at the clowns and they still have the same
number of white spots. The heated water still looks cloudy. My
treatment does not appear to be doing anything. What am I doing
wrong?

Why does the water get cloudy when raising the temperature?

You should be doing a 25% water change before you dose. As for the
cloudiness, I was going to say because of the temp change it might have been
a bacterial bloom, but your tests don't show that. In most cases it takes
up to 10 days to rid of all the ich because of the life cycles of the
parasite. If the spots dissappear, continue treatment after a 25% water
change. Also, in raising the temp so high you're not really helping
anything. The heat will be causing stress on your fish resulting in lower
immunity so even more fish might get sick. Their motabolism also races so
you need to feed them more, resulting in higher nitrates..your temp should
be fine ~80F.

Don't quote me on this, but I'm not a fan of mixing medications, especially
one that treats for external protozoa and the other treating for bacteria.
I'm not sure if it would cause a problem, but maybe.

You probably already have, but make sure your carbon is out

HTH
John.

"Computer Prog" wrote in message
om...
My 10G tank has been home to 2 small clown loaches, 2 guppies, and 2
neons for about 6 months now. I got tired of scraping algae off the
inside of the tank every few weeks so I bought a very small Pleco.
The tank looked great for about a week and then I started to see ick
on the 2 clowns on Friday.

I slowly raised the tank temp up to 85 degrees, added 2 tblsp of Doc
Wellfish Aquarium salt, and added a half-dose of Quick Cure
(formalin/malachite green) and a half dose of Maracyn II (anti
bacterial for secondary infections). I noticed that when I raised the
water temp the water got cloudy. Why is that? My water is usually
very clear.

I added a second half dose of Quick Cure on Sunday. I tested PH,
ammonia, Nitrate, and Nitrite. PH was 6.8, ammonia close to zero,
Nitrate and Nitrite were a little elevated, but not near dangerous
levels. I planned to change water on the next day.

On Monday I used a gravel vac to change about 30% of the water making
sure that the water I put back in was the same 85 degrees. I use a
Brita filter to clean the water before I put it in the tank. I added
a teaspoon of salt, another half-dose of Quick cure, and another
half-dose of Maracyn II.

Today (Tuesday) I looked at the clowns and they still have the same
number of white spots. The heated water still looks cloudy. My
treatment does not appear to be doing anything. What am I doing
wrong?

Why does the water get cloudy when raising the temperature?

I slowly raised the tank temp up to 85 degrees, added 2 tblsp of Doc
Wellfish Aquarium salt, and added a half-dose of Quick Cure
(formalin/malachite green) and a half dose of Maracyn II (anti
bacterial for secondary infections).

You're not really treating this right. First, Forget the temperature
increase. A nominal increase in temperature will not kill ich; you'd
have to jack it up to levels harmful to fish to do that (about 90
degrees for a week plus). Furthermore, any increase in temperature
places undue
stress on fish at a time when they are least disposed to deal with it.
An increase in temperature reduces the oxygen saturation of water.
Meanwhile, the fish are already having trouble taking up oxygen
because 1. saturation is reduced by medication/salt and 2. the ich
parasite attaches to the gills, where it leaves tiny little holes when
it detaches, physiologically impairing respiration. (Note that in ich
death is by suffocation; after enough parasites have attached to the
fishes' gills, they become physically unaable to respirate.)I know
that people will respond to this defending the temperature method and
pointing to the fact that it accelerates the parasites' life cycle
(which it does). However, this has no therapeutic effect other than to
make the treatment slightly faster (and thus ease your impatience),
and is greatly outweighed by all the negative effects above.

Second, the use of salt, quick cure, and maracyn II is not only
redundant but dangerous. As above, the more meds you have, the harder
it is for your fish to breathe. The maracyn II is wholly unnecessary
(I haven't seen secondary infections from ich very often, if they
develop you can treat them at that time, and the salt or quick cure
should prevent most secondary infections anyway). Settle on either
salt or quick cure. If you use salt, use a total of 1 tbsp/gallon,
adding 1 teaspoon/gallon every 12 hours to bring it up to a
concentration of 1 tablespoon/gallon (3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon). If
you use quick cure, note that clowns and neons are intolerant to the
active ingredient in these drugs. Therefore, use it in half doses and
at half intervals. Example: if your ich med says 5 mL/10 gallons
every 24 hrs, administer 2.5 mL/10 gallons every 12 hours. One further
note about salt: using simply the dosage of salt you currently have
(1 tbsp/5 gallons)in addition to quick cure is alright and may even
help; however, that salt concentration alone will not kill ich.

I noticed that when I raised the
water temp the water got cloudy. Why is that? My water is usually
very clear.

What kind of cloudiness? Do everything I recommended (including
dropping your temp bakc down, but SLOWLY) and the cloudiness shoudl
dissipate. Also watch how much you're feeding.

Nitrate and Nitrite were a little elevated, but not near dangerous
levels.

Any concentrations of nitrites certainly isn't helping.

I planned to change water on the next day.

Not all that economical when you're medicating, although a necessity
if you have a water quality problem.

I use a
Brita filter to clean the water before I put it in the tank.

That's fine if you want, but unless your tap water is liquid metal
it's not doing much.

Matthew Clark

I used Maracide because 6 months ago I had a similar outbreak of ICK
after adding new fish to a tank that had a 10 year old Pleco. I was
shocked to see ICK because in 15 years of keeping fish I never saw it
before. I tried to treat that round of ICK with Rid-Ick but it was
not helping. I then tried Coppersafe. The 10-yr old Pleco died.
Some of the added fish survived the ICK but came down with some other
sort of really bad infection. The book that came with Coppersafe
recommended Maracide for infection so I got some of that (but it was
too late). Everything died. I took the entire tank down, washed
everything, and started over.

Fast forward 6 months and I am now in this thread. I figured that the
Maracide would help with infection while treating with Quick Cure. I
only added two ½ dose treatments over the past week so I do not think
I did any damage.

The water looked pretty clear last night. I lowered the tank temp a
few degrees in the evening down to 82 and this morning the clowns
looked good. They have very few spots on them and they looked active.
I plan on doing a small water change tonight and adding another half
dose of Quick Cure.

Can MelaFix be used at the same time as Quick Cure while treating for
ICK?

Can MelaFix be used at the same time as Quick Cure while treating for
ICK?

Again, why? See my previous diatribe on lack of need for multiple
medications.

Second, I have found melafix to be generally useless. Ingredient-wise,
it is basically expensive herbal tea.

Matthew Clark

Please--that's GREASY expensive herbal tea. And it's not
useless; it makes your aquarium smell like potpourri...

"Matthew Clark" wrote in message
Second, I have found melafix to be generally useless. Ingredient-wise,
it is basically expensive herbal tea.

Matthew Clark

It has been about 11 days since I first spotted the ICK and it looks
like all of the white spots on the clowns are gone. I gradually
lowered the temp down to about 79 degrees and I am still treating with
half doses of QuickCure every odd day. I did 30% gravel vac water
changes with a little salt about 3 times during treatment and I
stopped using Maracyn. Everyone in the tank survived and they all
look healthy. The clowns are very active and they are not hiding.
Whenever I drop shrimp pellets into the tank they go right for them
and eat them very quickly. The Pleco even comes out for the pellets
and tries to share them with the clowns.

PH is currently 6.6, Ammonia is zero, Nitrite is zero, Nitrate is 10
ppm. I will continue to use Quickcure every odd day in a half dose
until the end of the week and then I will do another water change and
put the carbon back into the filter. Hopefully that should be enough
to kill off any ICK in the substrate.

So MelaFix is worthless? I thought that was a good product. I did
add MelaFix, StressCoat, and a small amount of salt to the water after
each water change.

Computer Prog wrote:

It has been about 11 days since I first spotted the ICK and it looks
like all of the white spots on the clowns are gone. I gradually
lowered the temp down to about 79 degrees and I am still treating with
half doses of QuickCure every odd day. I did 30% gravel vac water
changes with a little salt about 3 times during treatment and I
stopped using Maracyn. Everyone in the tank survived and they all
look healthy. The clowns are very active and they are not hiding.
Whenever I drop shrimp pellets into the tank they go right for them
and eat them very quickly. The Pleco even comes out for the pellets
and tries to share them with the clowns.

PH is currently 6.6, Ammonia is zero, Nitrite is zero, Nitrate is 10
ppm. I will continue to use Quickcure every odd day in a half dose
until the end of the week and then I will do another water change and
put the carbon back into the filter. Hopefully that should be enough
to kill off any ICK in the substrate.

So MelaFix is worthless? I thought that was a good product. I did
add MelaFix, StressCoat, and a small amount of salt to the water after
each water change.
It might be useless for ICK but I have used it for allot of other
reasons and it has never let me down.

Kay