Life after Ich?

[Killer_Guppy]

Well, it looks like after 2 weeks of ich, my platies are doing fine, but my clown loaches are a different story. One of them looks nearly-dead but still is trying to swim around while the other one is still swimming but totally covered in ich. I think it's safe to say that the clown loaches are probably gonners.

So, I guess, where do I go from here? once the loaches are gone, I'm assuming there'll still be ich floating around in the water. Is there anything I should be doing to address this or any special type of clean-up I can perform? I'd like to get clown loaches again, but I don't want to have them suffer the same fate.

 

[Lotus]

I have had good results using Coppersafe with loaches. Somehow the ich we have had on ours doesn't respond to methyline blue or salt or heat very well. You might want to remove the meds or whatever you have in your water and try it, as a last effort to save your loaches. If you decide to use it, start with 1/4 dose, and add another 1/4 dose every 4 hours or so (or the next day or whatever) until you are at full dose. Sometimes loaches are sensitive to the copper. Remember to take out the approx. number of gallons of decorations/substrate when you calculate how many gallons of water you have in your tank.

Clown loaches seem to be the first to get ich in a tank. Whenever they get stressed (moving to a new tank, for example) they seem to get it. I would recommend you get a quarantine tank, and quarantine new fish to make sure they don't have ich or anything else. That will save you many fish in the long run.

 

[420Loach]

DONT GIVE UP HOPE!! ive found clown loaches to be ALOT more hardy then most people give them credit! can you put them in a QT tank and do the salt/heat trick? ive had much success with that.

i also agree with what Lotus is saying.

good luck with them clowns -Loach

 

[Killer_Guppy]

Well, I've been using the Coppersafe with the tank temp hovering around 85F, which worked great on the platy w/ich, cleared him up in about 4 days, but the loaches just seem to be getting worse & worse. I sure hope these guys pull through, as they have become my fav. fish in the tank, but one of them was belly-up when I came home tonight, while the other one just doesn't look good at all. What really pisses me off is that the ich came with the clown loaches, as I went back to the store 4 days later, and sure enough, their loaches had ich as well. I think I'll be buying my fish from a different store next time, at least when it comes to the loaches.

Is there anything special that I should do once the ich is gone?

 

[Lotus]

No, there's nothing special you should do. I don't usually raise the temp on the tank with meds unless the instructions tell me to, it can be dangerous for the fish.

The other thing with ich is that you have to be very patient. Sometimes it can take 3 weeks to be totally cleared up. But, as you say, after 2 weeks, that's not a good sign. If the treatment doesn't seem to be working, you might want to change meds/treatments. If you do, make sure to do a largish water change and put carbon in your filter overnight to remove the old medicine. Some people have had good results with salt/heat, others like Kordon Rid Ich+.

You should probably vacuum the gravel more often when you have ich, as it helps get rid of some of the ich parasites in the free-swimming stage.

 

[revfred]

Kordon Rid-Ich+ has worked consistently for me. I use the stubborn case protocol for a minimum of 7-10 days, following the directions to the letter.