# Leave for a few days and come back to ich!!



## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Had to go out of town for a few days and came home to a tank full of ich affected fish. I left off my uv sterilyzer for some reason, but not sure it would have mattered. All 30+ or so fish are new to this tank and it just finished cycling about 10 days ago. It is easier to list how many NOT showing the tell-tale signs.

I have started treating with increased amounts of salt but not overly so. Current temp is 85F and slowly trying to get it to 86-88F and also using Ick-attack. Is this too much action?

My fish are all livebearers with the exception of one gourami. One or two of them don't look the happiest, but so far they don't look too stressed.


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## ChristineS (May 15, 2010)

I'm going to go ahead and bump this to the front page because one of my guppies just started showing signs of it, too. =[


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## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

jrman83 said:


> All 30+ or so fish are new to this tank and it just finished cycling about 10 days ago.


I think even for a cycled tank 30 fish is a lot to add all at once. It's better to add one or two at a time because the bacteria have to have the time to catch up with the extra bio load. It could be that your water quality isn't good because of this. Are you testing? Bad water quality will make your fish prone to ich. Are the fish new to you? Ich is a pretty common problem in new fish because of the stress of transport and being in lots of other tanks before they come to you.

If you don't know about it read about the life cycle of ich as it will help you understand how to get rid of them. I'd do some big water changes, hoovering the bottom of your aquarium well, that will help with water quality and remove some of the free swimming ich before they get to the fish. Salt has worked well for me in the past.


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

I will agree that adding 30+ fish at one time may not be the optimum situation, but they were all ordered through the mail, 75 in all and had to go in there (3 diff tanks). The tank was a fishless cycled tank. Before I put fish in it I could dose it to 4-5ppm in ammonia (much, much more than 30 livebearer fish could produce in 24hrs) and it would be gone in less than 18hrs. For a 125gal tank that takes nearly 5 teaspoons of ammonia to accomplish. Nonetheless, I tested for everything the first 3 days of putting the fish in there and never registered a single change in ammonia or nitrite.

I read up on the ich cycle and the treatment. Currently what I am trying seems pretty aggresive to me, since I am using temperature, medicine and salt to treat. No place that I read recommended to do all 3 at once and just wondered what everyone's thought on it was?

All the fish are new. Since there were no other fish in the tank I knew this would be the quarantine tank if needed be and I would just treat in place.


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## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

jrman83 said:


> I will agree that adding 30+ fish at one time may not be the optimum situation, but they were all ordered through the mail, 75 in all and had to go in there (3 diff tanks). The tank was a fishless cycled tank. Before I put fish in it I could dose it to 4-5ppm in ammonia (much, much more than 30 livebearer fish could produce in 24hrs) and it would be gone in less than 18hrs. For a 125gal tank that takes nearly 5 teaspoons of ammonia to accomplish. Nonetheless, I tested for everything the first 3 days of putting the fish in there and never registered a single change in ammonia or nitrite.


Ah yes I see, that makes sense. I've never tried both salt and meds at the same time. I found that salt and large water changes are usually enough. If not I move on to meds. I don't like using them as they are hard on fish but with so many fish it might be as well to nip it in the bud and expect some loss. Hope it works out for you! Keep us posted.


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