# wall of text containing ich and cycling questions



## Ras (Oct 20, 2013)

*Background story/info*
my fish have had ich for a bout a month, every time it goes away it just keeps coming back within a few days, i have a gold ram and ember tetras . it started with the rams , i bought two from a fishstore not knowing what ich was, when i was pointing to the ones i wanted the worker would say " you dont want that one he has ich on him". hearing this my mind instantly went to the childs word for something gross, or unwanted as in 'ick' or 'icky' , thinking he was referring to algae or maybe old food stuck to them that I wasnt seeing, idk... I was too stoked about actually finding a store that sold ram cichlids. Soooo i bought them, not knowing they were actually infected until they were covered in spots to the point where it was impossible to miss which was about a day after buying them, so i started treating them with Jungle ich gaurd that same day and doing water changes everyday afterward and treating all the new water i would put in the tank with more ich guard like the bottle said to do, i raised the temperature to what i feel is the highest temp my embers will bare and thats 80f, haven't wanted to go over this because when i look at descriptions of ember tetras the temp range that they would have listed next to the pics was around 70-80F in all the sites i looked at. anyways over the past month its been coming back on and off, i have been treating yet It still comes back the day after I stop medicating and half of my tank is dead because of this, either becuase of the ich or stress from the medicine.
the tap water at my house is high in ph and general hardness so 3/4 of the water change has to be distilled water, everyday, so far its come to about 70$ in water and ick gaurd over the past month (thats like 3x the price i paid for ALL the fish in my aquarium ). im wondering why this just isnt going away. the guy at the store told me today that i could try vacuuming my gravel and or setup another aquarium to be a sort of 'hospital' for them that way when im doing water changes it will be alot less water i need to buy 
it seems like my only option is to take them out and treat them in a smaller tank while i try to sanitize my actual aquarium because it feels like the ich is coming back so often because the actual tank is infested, so my plan was to buy a vacuum and a 10gal tank , take the fish out and put them in the smaller aquarium, treat the 10gal with ick guard then vacuum my other tank and treat that aswell, only now I will be able to just do water changes in my main tank with tap water which should save me alot of money.

this is just a plan, lmk what you guys think I should do
and heres parameters from my last water test(3-4 days ago), it was done with a testing strip so it isn't very accurate 
ph -6.5-7.5
gh -0-30
kh -0-30
no3 -0-20
no2- 0-.5
and my tank is 55 gallons
*Actual questions*
1) will this plan of a 'hospital' tank be to stressful for the sick fish?
2) (If the answer to question 1 is no) should I move only the sick fish or all the fish
3) can I use some sand and water from an already cycled tank to skip or aid the cycling process in this new 'hospital' tank
OR is my only option to get a vacuum, and keep treating them in the same tank
thats all,
Im planning on doing this all tomorrow if possible so the sooner you reply the better
thanks in advance 
p.s,








only you..........no pressure


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## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

Before I answer your questions a little background on ich. I always think of Ich as a stress disease. It is probably present in almost every aquarium, but most people never have an ich outbreak, why? Because the fish are healthy. When the fish are not healthy, ich can take over the fish skin. When does this happen? Poor water quality is number one IME. Think, wrong temperature, wrong hardness, dirty tank (organics), but there are a thousand things in the water that can contribute to it, you can't measure. Number 2 is mostly ich from direct stress, like moving the fish from an lfs to your home. This means stress and fish are more vulnerable. The thing about this is that when water quality is good, ich will go away on his own or after one treatment and never come back. 3 would be low immune system from bad feeding, but this is not very likely to take place in the first year.

To answer your questions:
1. Yes, but if it improves the situation, the benefits outweigh the stress. Like when there is NO2 in the water and you place the fish in a bucket of unheated water for a few days. This is not good, but keeping them in a tank with high NO2 it is more likely to die.
2. Always move all the fish, all fish can carry it although not visible to the naked eye. IMO, it is even better to treat the main tank because this way your fish don't need to be transferred.
3. As long as you place no filter in a hospital tank, cycling is not needed. Just replace the water every (other) day and keep the tank bare. This way it will never cycle.

Besides the questions: If the ich keeps coming bad, your water is not suiteable for the fish. Try to improve water quality, treat the main tank and keep water quality up!

A few other points to think about! Find out how high the KH of your tap is, if it is not too high, your better off using that than mixing with distilled water. Reverse osmosis water is cheaper compared to distilled water. Do you use water conditioner? Set temp at a steady 75.


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## Ras (Oct 20, 2013)

ths is what i hear often but then why dos ich spread from new fish to fish that have been in the tank for a while? i have been told that unhappy fish are more vulnerable but the fish were fine until the already infected rams entered the tank, then it spread. the tank is large 55 gal the filter is made for a 50 gal tank the water is aerated i feed them once a day with omega one super color flakes , plenty of caves and a good amount of live plants (though i am working on getting more) , my pleco takes care of algae and the cory sucks up fallen food.. they were fine, then the infected rams came, and the tetras slowly started catching it as well ... the tank was only a couple months old when the new rams came so maybe it wasnt cycled fully and this is why the other fish were vulnerable? but then why is it still coming back ? i have been testing the water to make sure its soft enough for them as i was told both ember tetras and rams like softer water... im just confused whats going on and what to do to keep it from coming back... 2 things i havent done is vacuum and setup a second quarantine tank 

so basically you are saying what I should do is remove the fish treat both tanks and do daily or every other day water changes in the quarantine tank 
vacuum both tanks , keep them both warm to aid the life cycle and then how many days after the spots are gone should i stop treating , ive heard 4 and ive heard 7days after

also after treating the main tank do i start removing water the next day? or wait later and to improve water quality would adding soft water lower ph and hardness etc and thus improve water quality?


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## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

Ras said:


> ths is what i hear often but then why dos ich spread from new fish to fish that have been in the tank for a while? i have been told that unhappy fish are more vulnerable but the fish were fine until the already infected rams entered the tank, then it spread.


Because they brought it... The Rams probably didn't had it. Otherwise it would stay away after treatment. Unless you didn't treated them long enough. The fish skin is still vulnerable for a few weeks after treatment. Till that day you need to make sure no new ich outbreak happens.



Ras said:


> the tank is large 55 gal the filter is made for a 50 gal tank


It is already too small for the tank you have! And IMO all filter that state they are suitable for up to 50G, are at tops made for 25G. So keep in mind, your filtration is already quite bad. This means you are more likely to have NH3/4 and NO2 in your tank from time to time. Especially the two weeks after cleaning your filter.



Ras said:


> the tank was only a couple months old when the new rams came so maybe it wasnt cycled fully and this is why the other fish were vulnerable?


Could very well be the case. Test for NO2! NH3/4 test kits are not that reliable but perhaps you can test that one as well. Vacuuming should not be a problem in the first month. If the gravel is already so dirty it need to be vacuumed, than you are severely overfeeding or it is overstocked.



Ras said:


> so basically you are saying what I should do is remove the fish treat both tanks and do daily or every other day water changes in the quarantine tank
> vacuum both tanks , keep them both warm to aid the life cycle and then how many days after the spots are gone should i stop treating , ive heard 4 and ive heard 7days after





Ras said:


> also after treating the main tank do i start removing water the next day? or wait later and to improve water quality would adding soft water lower ph and hardness etc and thus improve water quality?


I personally would just treat the main tank and not setup a hospital tank. That is way easier. Still make sure water quality is good. Depending on the temperature (and thus the speed of the life cycle of ich) you need to treat for at least 14 days.

Do a large water change in your main tank (80%), make sure the new water is not that much different in KH, TDS and temperature. Then start treating with malachite green (most anti ich contain this) and raise temperature slowly to 80 degrees to speed things up. After a week, do a 50% water change and treat again. A week later do a 50% water change and slowly bring the temperature back to normal (my advise would be at least 78, because the rams do better in water a little warmer). If you want to change KH/pH do this slowly over the course of weeks, 1 degree KH at a week max.

There is a very good article here!


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## Ras (Oct 20, 2013)

Yo-han said:


> Because they brought it... The Rams probably didn't had it. Otherwise it would stay away after treatment. Unless you didn't treated them long enough. The fish skin is still vulnerable for a few weeks after treatment. Till that day you need to make sure no new ich outbreak happens.


but if its present in most wouldnt it have been in mine already too? why didn't I get an outbreak before if my fish were so stressed the entire time ive owned them? why did it spread only after someone already infected entered the tank if it was most likely in the tank to begin with? does that make sense? this part always gets me confused

I think what happened was I thought the tank was fully cycled when it wasn't, it was just supporting the school of tetras i had and the nitrate and amonia spike from adding the rams might of irritated the tetras

just seems off to me that they were eating fine ,vibrant in color, even pretty playful yet they were stressed out so much that they caught diseases 
it only happening after the rams came makes me think something got thrown off or they were just simply infected by the ram, I really dont feel like i was taking bad care of them ...could be wrong of course but I didnt see any signs of stress before this happened and I followed every rule i was told . my friend who has a nice established tank of neons and embers told me that basically if im doing something wrong with ember tetras that I will know from discoloration or odd behavior, shyness and hiding/resting all day long etc but I didnt see anything wrong with mine, until i got the two rams



Yo-han said:


> It is already too small for the tank you have! And IMO all filter that state they are suitable for up to 50G, are at tops made for 25G. So keep in mind, your filtration is already quite bad. This means you are more likely to have NH3/4 and NO2 in your tank from time to time. Especially the two weeks after cleaning your filter.


My tank isnt filled to the top, I keep it filled only to 50 that way the filter aerates the water more, was told not to buy anything more powerful for the tank size because the fish could get sucked up and trapped and the power of the filter as is would be high enough to clean all the water w.o catching unsuspecting fish, though i was already planning on getting a nicer one soon so ill keep that in mind but I have never had problems with this filter before. I used it for my old loaches aswell, and they did great . that being said i still do want to get a nicer sponge filter but i dont feel my existig filter was the problem [/QUOTE]



Yo-han said:


> Could very well be the case. Test for NO2! NH3/4 test kits are not that reliable but perhaps you can test that one as well. Vacuuming should not be a problem in the first month. If the gravel is already so dirty it need to be vacuumed, than you are severely overfeeding or it is overstocked.


I meant vacuuming for the dead and falling ich parasites, a few sites suggest that this is part of the reason ich outbreaks reoccur is because of ich living in the gravel , Its not a food issue or waste issue, I only have about 6 fish in this tank atm, and at its full stock i only had 10 which shouldnt be over stocked in my tank at all unless it wasnt done cycling which is what im starting to think the problem was



Yo-han said:


> I personally would just treat the main tank and not setup a hospital tank. That is way easier. Still make sure water quality is good. Depending on the temperature (and thus the speed of the life cycle of ich) you need to treat for at least 14 days.


thinking this might be the problem, I didnt treat that long or even close to that long, the site i was following said treat 4 days after the spots disappear and the spots were gone 2 days after treating
so all together I treated them for about lil less than a week each time it came back, starting to seem like this wasn't long enough



Yo-han said:


> Do a large water change in your main tank (80%), make sure the new water is not that much different in KH, TDS and temperature. Then start treating with malachite green (most anti ich contain this) and raise temperature slowly to 80 degrees to speed things up. After a week, do a 50% water change and treat again. A week later do a 50% water change and slowly bring the temperature back to normal (my advise would be at least 78, because the rams do better in water a little warmer). If you want to change KH/pH do this slowly over the course of weeks, 1 degree KH at a week max.
> 
> There is a very good article here!


do I do that by adding softer water like i was saying or is there some chemical I have to buy like "ph stable' or w.e?

p.s if i dont have a liquid tester and the lfs uses strips to test water how would I get an accurate test w.o having to buy one of those 60$ water testers, cuz Im kind of broke right now and I have no idea how much distilled water to tap water I should be adding to get the right conditions... so I think i need to test the tap water then go from there? right?


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## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

Maybe you can get a water report from your local supplier. I know I can find it online for my tap. This way you've a starting value. I would never use chemicals like that, they only work temporarily so it causes more fluctuations and thus problems. Keep it the way you've for know and assume it reoccured because you didn't finished it for know. And it started because a little spike because not fully cycled. When it does come back again we look at this again

About vacuuming the bottom, this is true for many kind of worms but ich is a parasite that needs a host. It can only live for a X number of hours without, and gravel can't host the parasite AFAIK. So start the treatment with malachite green first and see how they do 2 weeks from now.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk


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## Ras (Oct 20, 2013)

awesome thanks man
and i went to check my filter because you got me all worried and you are right it says 30-50 on the back so this is really probably ideal in a 30 gallon then correct? just because it would work in a 50 doesn't mean it is best in one is what I'm getting from that, if that's the case i actually have a second one, would running both be ok until I buy a real nice filter or would that be too much current or suction or something
I also have 3 20-40's somewhere in a closet if 2 or 3 of those would be better until I find something permanent, though I feel like 3 filters would be too much


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## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

Honestly without reading through every post here I'd like to add that I often cure ich without adding any kind of medication. It is very temperature sensitive. If you raise the temperature to 85 F it goes through its life cycle too quickly to reproduce and it dies off. 

I also think that ich tends to be in everyone's water as well, perhaps as a spore or something like that. Otherwise you would not be able to get ich in a tank that has not had new fish added for months. I recently saw my angels get ich when the temperature dropped to 70F for a few days (didn't realize my heater was unplugged). I plugged it in and set it to 85 and within a few days the ich cleared up without any salt or medication. The tank had not had any new fish added to it for at least 4 months.


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## Ras (Oct 20, 2013)

Zapins said:


> Honestly without reading through every post here I'd like to add that I often cure ich without adding any kind of medication. It is very temperature sensitive. If you raise the temperature to 85 F it goes through its life cycle too quickly to reproduce and it dies off.
> 
> I also think that ich tends to be in everyone's water as well, perhaps as a spore or something like that. Otherwise you would not be able to get ich in a tank that has not had new fish added for months. I recently saw my angels get ich when the temperature dropped to 70F for a few days (didn't realize my heater was unplugged). I plugged it in and set it to 85 and within a few days the ich cleared up without any salt or medication. The tank had not had any new fish added to it for at least 4 months.


thanks you reminded me
someone in aquaticcomunity.com actually pretty strongly suggested i do this since I used the meds for so long, could be harmful to the fish or even be giving the parasites tolerance to the meds so I decided this is the best thing for me to try. I already had weird feelings about the medicine...plus the fact it turns the water and sand blue is not very settling to see


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## Yo-han (Oct 15, 2010)

Yes a very good non medicine method! Make sure you have temps of at least 85, so they can't reproduce. Below 85 they only reproduce faster!


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## Ras (Oct 20, 2013)

Yo-han said:


> Yes a very good non medicine method! Make sure you have temps of at least 85, so they can't reproduce. Below 85 they only reproduce faster!


awesome
did you see my question about the filters? (sorry to push)


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