Help! Is this Ich?

[ritchiebrendan]

I bought some Rummynose Tetras and they have come down with what I believe is Ich. The problem is that I have been dosing Ich X as directed for the past 8 days and while during the first 4 days it seemed to have been working, it never completely left and the now is as bad as it has ever been. I don't want to raise the temp because I have a hill stream loach in the tank and this is my only tank.

20 gallon, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 0 nitrate (I have been doing daily water changes dosing Ich X), 150ppm GH, 40ppm KH, 6.4-6.8 pH

Edited August 23, 2021 by ritchiebrendan

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

Hi there, yes it appears to be Ich, sadly sometimes it comes back to rear it's ugly head. I have battled Ich 2x successfully and now I'm on my 3rd battle in another tank. Ugh. What I've learned is that you have to dose meds until there have been NO signs of Ich for at LEAST 7 days after all spots have gone away. Carefully monitor water conditions because fish that are sick need clean water, if this means you do a water change FIRST then redose meds then that's what you do. Most battle Ich by raising the temp in the tank to 80-82 degrees (I have done this and I've not done this, either way I've won the battles), this does not kill the Ich, but what it does is speeds up the lifecycle of the Ich and often reduces medication time as the only time Ich is vunerable to meds is not when your fish have spots but when the spots (that are really more like scabs) fall off and the eggs fall towards the substrate- then baby Ich come out of those eggs to find your fish again THIS is when they can be killed. While the spots still exist there is still Ich. Make sense?

Edited August 23, 2021 by xXInkedPhoenixX
1 more thing.

[lefty o]

it sure looks like ich.

[ritchiebrendan]

Thanks for the quick replies xXInkedPhoenixX and lefty o. I have been doing a ton of research and everything I have been reading makes it seem like by this point I should be seeing some results from the Ich X treatments. I am doing the daily 30% water changes, gravel vacing, and redosing as directed. 10mL since it is a 20 gallon tank. I am new to the hobby, about a year in, and since I am not seeing the results that most say I should be, I wanted to be sure I wasn't misdiagnosing the disease. The only other thing I could think was Velvet, but this doesn't seem to fit the description as well as it does Ich. xXInkedPhoenixX, do you treat with Hikari Ich X?

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

I've never used IchX but it is one that Aquarium Co-op recommends and most people seem to like it. The first time I battled it I used API Super Ick cure- it dyed some silicone but it cured my fish (that time I used heat and that was in a 20 gallon). The second time I did it was without heat and I used Seachem's Paraguard (in a 3 gallon quarantine) and it worked perfectly. This time I'm using Paraguard in a 9 gallon. 

[Fonske]

I had one case of medication-resistant disease that looked exactly like ich, and the only way I was able to get rid of it was to put the fishes into a hospital tank (a plastic box, really) and treat with salt. I have never used Ich-X or Paraguard, but the medicine I used for other ich outbreaks was able to clean the white spots in three to four days with no re-occurrences. 

 

[Gator]

Remember that most of our aquarium fish come from extremely warm tropical areas of the Equatorial regions of the world, if we mimic those warm waters we'll have fewer fish diseases.

I only have room for 4 tanks in my small apartment, the temp in one has been at 84.9 for years, the other three have been kept at a temp somewhere between 81 and 83 degrees. I've never had to medicate the one tank for any reason while I'd sometimes have to medicate the other three from time to time.

Someone posted on this forum that he thought someone's fish had Columanaris, I've had aquariums for a very long time and have never heard of this disease so I googled it.  It turns out that the common names for Columanaris is Saddleback disease or Patch disease, but I also found an article by the Minnesota Dept. of Natural Resources (MNDNR).

The MNDNR article is only two paragraphs long, but the article contains a wealth of information such as the only fish in the aquarium hobby that should be kept at temps below 85 degrees are Goldfish.

These people at the MNDNR are educated Fisheries Biologists or they wouldn't have their jobs.

The reason why your fish are already sick when they arrive at your LFS is because they have been overcrowded in a bag, not fed, the temp dropped since bagging, the fish have used up most of the oxygen in transit, the ammonia level has built up to almost toxic levels, and the fish have been jostled beyond belief in transit, they're already near death when they arrive at your LFS. If you want to set up a QT, maybe you should, but raise the temp to about 85 degrees.

Another thing, we have a lot of newbies on this forum, who are people trying to impress by using taxonomic (Scientific) names for fish and/or fish diseases? Some of these newbies are young and it's their first aquarium, we'd like for them to be in the hobby for a long time. We may call a species of fish Gambusia, but it's common name is Mosquito fish and they're common in the Southeast, so why not call them Mosquito fish?

Sincerely

Gator

[ritchiebrendan]

So now I have used two different bottles of Ich X, one for 10 days at 78 degrees and the second for 4 days at 82 degrees, to treat what I believe to be ich. I saw Cory’s and Prime Time Aquatics video on ich and was hopeful that if I stayed the course it would work. I tried two different bottles hoping that maybe one lot number was bad, but after two weeks I have seen no results. I have lost all 6 of the Rummynose tetras and it is now spreading to my Cardinal Tetras. The one pictured here is the worse by far. It is also on my hill stream loach. One person mentioned removing the loach but I figured since everyone has it I should just treat the whole tank. I gravel vacuum every day when I retreat Ich X after a 30 percent water change like the instructions say. At this point I don’t know what else to do. Does anyone else have any other recommendations? Maybe the Prime ich med? I have plants, snails, shrimp, and Otto cats so I need to be careful with what I treat with. So frustrating…

[Colu]

It could be epistylis it's often mistaken for white spot recommend treatment is kanaplex in food I would also recommend treating with seachems paraguard and kanaplex together as long as your using kanaplex in food you can treat with paraguard in the tank he's a food recipe for kanaplex @ritchiebrendan

Edited August 28, 2021 by Colu