PLEASE HELP!

[Lena975]

I lost one fish two days ago and I'm about to lose my pleco. I have ICK and since I've never, ever had it before I didn't realize what was going on till it was too late. The ICK cure I'm using doesn't seem to be working, in fact everything seems to be getting alot worse and now my tank is blue. Can I add a different kind? PLEASE HELP!

 

[H2O]

I'm somewhat new to this forum, but I'll share what I think I would do:

The blue color is probably from the ick cure. Did you raise the water temp during treatment, and remove the charcoal?

To start with, I'd do an immediate water change of 25 to even 50%.

Please give a list of symptoms, including in what way things seem to be getting a lot worse.

Best of luck-I hope someone with more knowledge will give more advice!

 

[Leopardess]

I strongly encourage you to ditch the medicines (most of which make ridiculous claims like "cures ich in 24 hours!") and replace it with good old proven salt and heat. Adding salt and raising the temperature WILL kill the ich. There is no two ways about it. It's cheaper, it doesn't turn your water blue, and it's probably less damaging in the long run. Don't go adding more medicines to the tank because they can have a negative impact when combined. You'd basically be creating a toxic soup.

Please search about ICH and understand it's life cycle so you can better understand how to kill it.

PS - I'm going to send you a PM right now, please read it

And welcome to the forum, both of you!

 

[Lena975]

I raised the water temp and removed teh charcoal and I have been doing 25% water changes since Monday. Today I did a super massive one of about 60% of the water. To be honest I have had fish since I was like 9, measuring everything whole nine yards and this is the very first time I have ever seen ICK. Symptoms, well Smooches, he was our Guoromi started to get really frisky, swimming around at high speeds a lot, etc. which is somewhat normal for him but it was erratic, I dismissed it as him being him and then he started to swim around and then do a free fall to the bottom of the tank, this was on Sunday, that was when I started treating with the meds I have. Monday partial water change and he took a turn for the worse, would just lay at the bottom of the tank (He was about 7 and grew up in a 45 gallon.) on his side. It looked like his skin was coming off, white foam like stuff coming off him but he still had the salt sprinkles on him and small red patches. He does the white foamy thing sometimes when he's really stressed, he did it when we moved from Va to Ca. Okay then that night around his eyes got really red and he just looked weak. The following morning we found him dead, we are both pretty upset about it. Now our Pleco, Oscar, had started to get the white spots yesterday, I didn't have a quarantine tank and it looked like he had a very tiny few from the beginning, although not when I bought him. Did exactly how I outlined above. I added the meds like every other day like the bottle told me to doing a partial water change of 25% and now he has even more of the salt looking grains on him and some patchy skin and he seems listless although we haven't had him for that long so it could just be the way he is. I now have him in a bowl that I brought the levels to a safe place for him, with an air stone and added what little sea salt I had in the house to the tank and his little bowl, I really didn't amount to much just about a teaspoon at the most to the tank with a tiny bit towards the bowl.

 

[MaryPa]

Foam or cotton looking stuff? If it looks like fuzzy white on him it sounds like a fungus.Salt looking spots is ick. How often do you do water changes using the gravel vac? How much water do you change? There must be a cause for the fungus and ick. Have you tested for ammonia or nitrAtes lately? Sorry you fish are sick.
I use Coppersafe for all my scaleless fish. You need to be careful what chemicals you use when you have cats in the tank. They have to be safe for scaleless fish.

 

[Lena975]

It doesn't look like fuzzy white stuff exactly more like his skin was peeling where it was red. I'm not too sure how exactly to describe it. I do 25% water changes every week, I always use the gravel vac, it's actually easier that way than any other way. We did just add Oscar on the 30th of last month. Yes I've tested the ammonia levels and nitrates and both are fine, I test those everytime I do a water change since I'm not familiar with the water system here, I am somewhat paranoid about those levels. To be honest I did my reading up on ICK after Smooches died because when my friend told me about it when he gave me Smooches he made it sound like it was no big deal and since I had never dealt with it before in any of my tanks I just used the chemicals he gave me which told me to use a lower dosage for scaleless fish, which I did. Now I'm doing the higher temp and salt method which seems to be working somewhat, I moved Oscar to our super small tank, about a 2 gallon and just hit the other tank with salt and hot water, the small tank is at a temp of 82 and the big tank is at 81, I can't get it to go any higher although I am still trying. Oscar now looks like he has a lot less "salt" on him than he did when he was swimming around in the big tank. I'm still paranoid about his odds, probably because of Smooches because he looked like he had very few "salt" particals on him right before he died.

Thanks,

Lena