How should I treat ich?

[Phooka]

Tonight I noticed ick spots on a few of my fish. As of right now all I've done is turn up the heat a little, and before I do anything else I want to make sure that I'm not going to hurt anything.
Here are my main concerns:
1. I have pretty many snails. I know that medication will hurt them. Are there any snail-safe meds, or do I just have to move them to another QT tank while I treat the main tank?
2. My scaleless fish: I have kuhli loaches, otos, and one cory (I'm getting him some friends as soon as I can find more of the same kind, by the way.) I know the medication can hurt them, too. At least one of the loaches has ich, the other two I haven't gotten a good look at lately so I'm not sure. I've read that medication in half-doses is ok for scaleless fish. Is that right?
3. I have three ADFs. Can they carry ich, and can I medicate them, too? Or should I take them out and put them in a QT tank?
4. I have some live plants and I've read that meds will hurt them? So... what should I do?


Also, how high is safe for the temperature? Should I add salt or no? And what meds do you guys recomend?

All my other fish are various tetras and livebearers, nothing really notable.


Thanks.

 

[Purple]

Hmm...tricky one - bad combination of animals etc to have to treat

You have salt sensitive fish in there - not sure how the frogs get on with fish meds (or if they can carry ich) and the snails are in the same boat

If you can get the tank (slowly) up to 86F and hold it there for a few weeks you should be ok though............but do some research to see how that lot get on with a temperature that high......

 

[Phooka]

An update, not that any one cares, but for future reference:

I took out most of the snails, but the frogs and loaches and otos were all hiding., and I didn't have time to hunt them down. But they ended up being ok, anyway.
I treated with Ick Clear from Jungle Labs. It did stain the silicone but I was never really worried about that. I did 3/4ths dose the first time, and then every time after that a half dose or smaller. I also rasised the temperature and added a small handful of salt (not enough to even make a difference in the tank, really, more for peace of mind.) Not sure how much that helped with the ick, but it did cause all my livebearers to go into labor. So I got lots of babies out of the deal, at least.
Five of six rummy-nosed tetras died. I'm assuming it was due to the ick itself and not the medicine, because they were coated in ick. I would have just euthanized them, but I'm too squeamish to do it myself. It was sad, all my 'Rudolph fishies' died for Christmas.
Three of twelve ember tetras died. This was due to the medicine and other stresses like water and temp raises, because I'm pretty sure I never saw ick spots on them and they were otherwisereally healthy.
Four of five neons died. I'm pretty sure they were the fish that brought the ick into the tank in the fist place (my mothers idea, by the way.)
And one oto, but I found him under a rock so I think he may have been squished? For some reason they think they can hang out with the khulii's, and like, burrow and stuff.
None of the snails I left in the tank were hurt, and the ADFs were ok, too.
Right now there is only one each of the neon and rummy-nosed tetras, but they're schooling with all the other tetras and don't seem too traumatized.

This probably sounds like a lot of deaths, but there were also tons of survivors, including baby Endlers and platys and a lot of other really sensitive tetras.