# Natural Ich cure?



## 90gal

All,
I noticed some white spots on my clown loaches the other day and panicked, they're my favorites in the tank and have grown quite a bit. Some online recommendations cautioned on medications since they're so sensitive, and recommended raising the temp up to the high 80s - even low 90s! I cautiously raised the temp over three days to 88 and the ich on the loaches went away but I lost one two year old red eye Tetra. All other fish were fine. Two days later I brought it back down. I thought this was bizarre, but have held their recommendation to keep the temp in mid 80s for a week. The online theory circled around the bio-development cycle of ich and it's inability to sustain cycle in heat. Anyone else had any experience with this? 
Rob


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## Roy Deki

I have kept the temp up to 87 for two weeks. I read some where that, that is longer than the cycle of Ich. It worked for me.


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## Zapins

Higher temperatures speed up the metabolism of the ich parasite. So when you heat up the water the parasite goes through its lifecycle faster than it is designed to, it essentially ages much faster. Because it ages so much faster than it is supposed to it can't reproduce in time and it just dies off. A lot of weed killers act in the same way: speed up plant growth, plant dies before it has time to make seeds and weeds are gone.

It also helps if you add salt to the water since the salt concentration messes with the osmolarity of the ich parasites. The higher the salt content the more cells are stressed and the more burst because of the salt difference between inside and outside the cell.

You actually can dose ich medicine with clown loaches, but since they are considered to be scaleless fish you will need to dose less than the recommended dose. If I remember right, all ich medicine bottles should say how much to dose for scaleless fish.

Temperature alone isn't the best method of curing your fish. Its not the most effective method. The best method of dealing with ich in my experience has been to dose with an anti ich medicine and then increase the temperature to the mid 80's while doing water changes every few days. Make sure to keep the tank well aerated as warmer water doesn't carry as much oxygen as cooler water.


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## evercl92

Personally, the best method I've found with sensitive fish:

50-80% WC, starting at first sign, then every other day
keep temp at 88deg
increase aeration

The WC help decrease the number of the protozoan free swimming in the water - and thus the ones that are able to re-attach and attack your fish. The heat helps to hasten this period of the life cycle. 

As a general rule (at the LFS where I worked), when we got loaches, pleco, and other ich-sensitive fish, we always placed them in warmer tanks for this reason. When purchasing these species, ask the person working how long they've had the fish, have any showed signs of outbreak/any died, etc. Also take a good look at all of the fish in that tank (and any other tanks that share its filtration) and check them for potential disease issues. 

I don't buy any fish from a tank that I see 1 look iffy. It's not worth the chance - unless you want to deal with the whole quarantine setup. 

Stress also plays a big part in the progression of the disease. Increased stress leads to decrease immune response. If you plan on getting fish, do a WC the day of or before to give your new fish new, clean water.


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## Six

Your clown loaches will not like the addition on salt. 

Warm water and water changes will definitely help. You picked a fish that is prone to ich, unfortunately. I'll back evercl92's suggestions.


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## tkos

At the low dose levels of salt (NaCl) used to kill off ich, clown loaches will be fine in the short term (up to 3 weeks or so). You are already adding ferts to the tank which is also salts.


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## Six

I'd never use aquarium salt, loaches or not. I've heard of ODs more than cures and it's never done anything for me that other less stressful alternatives couldn't help. 

To each their own.


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## tkos

How is it any worse oding with salt than with meds or ferts or any additive. It is up to the aquarist to be diligent with anything they add to an aquarium. Even turning up the temp on a tank requires diligence as aquarium heaters are not always reliable, plus increased temps often lead to decreased O2 levels.


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## SnakeIce

86* F will kill off most strains of ich. So for the OP to see ich disappear after keeping the temperature at 88 is not that remarkable.

At 82* F ich goes through the cycle in about 3 days, and is only vulnerable in the free swimming stage. One teaspoon of salt per gallon is enough to kill ich, and fish are generally safe up to 3 teaspoons per gallon. So if you use 2 teaspoons per gallon to treat, you can be assured you have enough to kill ich and are below the tolerance level for most fish.


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## 90gal

The loaches are fine now, but I tried lowering the temp from 84 at about day 4 and the tiny spots immediately came back so I raised it up and they've been gone since. My wife thinks I'm crazy because she could barely see them, I caught it early. I know they're sensitive, but I've had many clown loaches in the past and these ones I've had for about 2 years and they're my favorites!


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## lauraleellbp

I don't doubt that loaches are sensitive to high levels of salt, but I'm one of those pro-salt in fish-only aquariums people, I keep about 1/2tsp per gallon in my 46gal fish-only tank with 2 clown loaches and they've never had a prob (had them for 4 or 5 years, they're coming up on 6" and soon to go in my 90gal...) 

If your ich persists I'd remove the plants and put the plants through a potassium permangante bath and stash them somewhere else for a few weeks, dose the tank with 1/2 tsp. salt per gallon, plus keep the temp up around 85 for 2 weeks (no prob with the plants gone). More dramatic but if nothing else works...

My guess is because ich gets down in the substrate you're going to have real problems getting rid of it now that it seems pretty established?


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## Zapins

Ich isn't a problem if you keep the tank and fish healthy. It is usually present in every person's tank and usually isn't a problem unless the fish get stressed out. Now that they are showing signs of ich just keep with the treatment and keep doing water changes, keep the fish healthy. After a week and a half when the fish have recovered from whatever stressed them out you can return the tank to normal and they should be ok. 

Ich is a common and relatively easy disease to deal with, no need to get overly worried about it.


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## DaveS

Zapins said:


> Ich isn't a problem if you keep the tank and fish healthy. It is usually present in every person's tank and usually isn't a problem unless the fish get stressed out. Now that they are showing signs of ich just keep with the treatment and keep doing water changes, keep the fish healthy. After a week and a half when the fish have recovered from whatever stressed them out you can return the tank to normal and they should be ok.
> 
> Ich is a common and relatively easy disease to deal with, no need to get overly worried about it.


Is this really true? I have seen so many people stating that ich is always present, but all of the research I have done seems to suggest that this just isn't true. I would love to have a definitive answer to the question once and for all. I know that I have never had ich outbreaks unless I added non quarantined fish that were infected already. I'm not sure that adding one fish to a large tank counts as a high stress situation, yet once my fish were exposed most if not all of them had visible signs of the parasite. My tanks have gone powerless in the winter, drained almost empty from filter failures, BGA infestations, aggressive fish, and broken heaters and I have yet to get a stress related ich outbreak. From what I have seen of ich outbreaks, once the parasite is introduced, it propagates very, very rapidly at tropical tank temperatures. I just find it hard to believe that ich is always present yet stays alive at undetectable levels in our tanks. In addition, ich has no dormant stage in the life cycle. For ich to live, it must go through the normal infect, trophant, free swimming cycle every several days to survive.

Sorry to get off topic, but this is something that has always interested me in the hobby.

Dave


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## lauraleellbp

I'm on your side with this one, Dave- I think it's probably true that ich is always present in dealer tanks and therefore probably most of the fish we are able to obtain in the hobby have been exposed to it, but I know I've done the best I can to keep it from in my tanks, and none of my fish in my tanks have EVER had after they made it into one of my tanks (quarantine quarantine quarantine)... I won't say for sure my tanks are ich-free, but I sure hope they are!


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## evercl92

FWIW, I have over 100 fish in my tank. All but a few were from a LFS. I don't and haven't had a quarantine tank. Call it lucky, but I've never had an issue with ich (or any other disease for that matter) if my tank. 

Sure, I've had fish die, but I saw no sign of disease. 
I do have a tetra that looks like it has a tumor under it's eye though.

If ich or other disease is present, then my fish must find my tank very non-stressful.


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## lauraleellbp

You must have an awesome LFS and are truly blessed! =)


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## DaveS

I'm with you on the quarantine issue Laura. I have introduced ich twice by not using a QT tank (both times the fish were bought in Columbus which is a bit ironic considering evercl's luck!) and that was more than enough for me to learn my lesson.

Dave


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## bigpaa

I had ich even 2 months after my last purchase from the LFS. Raising the temp cured it immediately.


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## Zapins

After reading DaveS, and lauraleellbp's post questioning if ich was always present in the aquarium I did a bit of research on google and came up with some interesting facts! Seems they were right to question the dormancy aspect of ich's life cycle.

I found a fascinating article on ich. Quite a bit of explanation here that I think is very informative. I'd rather not summarize it for the lazy readers (lol), this is a must read (even though its long)!!

Seems that there is a lot of myth surrounding ich and quite a bit of confusion.

I think this page should be made into a sticky on the fish forum page.

http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/health/ich.shtml


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## lauraleellbp

That's an EXCELLENT site and great article- good research- thanks! Bookmarked to look through that entire site more...


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## Loach Shark

I got some mollies and they gave my tank ich. I medicated with bromthyml blue and took out the carbon. Black mollies are saltwater fish in my opinion. I even saw on Planet Earth or some show where they found mollies living in a cave stream. The water had a very high concentration of sulfuric acid. They didn't think anything could survive it.


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