Help – Bad outbreak of whitespot

[wolfie]

We have been treating the tank with King British WS3 white spot terminator for a week but it does not seem to be clearing and we have today lost our first fishes – 1 cherry barb & 3 penguin fish. We have been using half doses due to having several lightly scaled fish in the tank, but they are still reacting so badly to the treatment that they are now damaging themselves by flicking. One loach is quite big and is probably stressing the other fish more with his flicking, as it is particularly violent.

Our tank currently consists of:

3 Scissortail Rasbora
3 Agassi Corys
1 Barbatus Cory
1 Clown Barb
5 Checker Barbs
1 Red-tailed Black Shark
2 Algae Loach


We tested the water today and the nitrates were a little high but everything else was fine, however we have since done a 30% water change to be safe.

We have read on the forums that it is best to increase the water temp to around 28 degrees, but our biggest concern is that the corys and scissortails should be kept in temps up to 24 – 25. These fish are not showing signs of white spot so we are worried that we’ll kill them anyway if we raise the temp too high. The fish that definitely have white spot are the Clown Barb and Checker Barbs.

The only differences in the tank of late have been the addition of two Checker Barbs and the addition of coral to slightly raise the Ph level, which has gone from 6.0ph on the 15/12/05 to 7.0ph today the 31/12/05.

Any advice gratefully received.

 

[Pure]

Yes you need to increase your temp. The ich parasite can only be killed after it has become free swimming. Increasing the temp speeds up it's life cycle. Just keep an eye on the Cories for any signs of stress. They should be ok for the duration of the treatment.

For our tanks that have loaches and other sensitive fish we use copper safe. I don't know if this is something that is available in the UK but any other copper sulfate based med should do.

 

[Lotus]

I personally don't like to raise the temp of the water unless the medicine instructions say to. Meds can reduce the amount of oxygen in the water, and this is further reduced at higher temperatures. If you increase the temperature, add an airstone or increase surface agitation in another way.

Ich can take a good two weeks to cure. If you're still seeing more spots appear after a week of treatment, or more fish seem to be getting infected, then your med might not be working.

This is a really good article on ich: http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/ich.php reading it will help you understand what's going on in your tank, and perhaps you can work out if your medication is a good one.