Charchar2 wrote:@Redpanda; Good luck! I hope you come home to find her safe and sound. <3
I just got back from vacation to find an ick outbreak in my community tank. The pet sitter didn't notice it so I have no clue when it started ;_; My dad insisted on putting the full dose of medicine in so I'm super worried that my two loaches are going to be overloaded, since I've read they're sensitive and should only have half doses. They're so lively and sweet, absolutely my favorite fish in the tank - I'm terrified I'll wake up tomorrow morning to find them dead. D': On the other hand, I wouldn't want to have put in a half dose and had all my other fish die from ick because it wasn't effective enough ... Gah. I've never dealt with fish disease before, I'm really worried ><
Okay, I actually had a super bad ich outbreak not too long ago. Nobody could even help me.... What I found worked for me was this:
*Salt the crap out of the tank. Like, salt that mess up. (Freshwater aquarium salt.) High amounts of salt kills the ich in its free-swimming stage. Ich cannot be harmed in egg form or on the body of the fish. Salt also causes the fish to thicken their protective slime-coats. It somewhat subdues them, like a drug, kind of calms them down from being so stressed about the ich.
*Raise the temperature to like 82-86 degrees. This will speed up the life cycle so they will go to the free-swimming stage quicker. Higher temps also cause fish to heal faster (like open wounds from where ich parasites have dropped off).
*Medicate the tank with 1 or 2 packets of API super ick cure powder like every day or whatever. Who cares about reading labels... not me. My African featherfin catfish was supposed to be sensitive to it... I pretty much super-overdosed the whole tank for weeks desperate to find a way to get rid of the stuff and he was totally fine. (He still is. Kind of wish he'd go away, he's like a plague, but I love him.)
*Turn the lights off so the fish are in the dark. Nobody told me this last part until I had already lost half my fish, but as soon as I tried turning the lights off half the ich disappeared overnight and I was so happy. (I normally never turn the lights off for my fish, the tank serves as sort of a nightlight for me.. and the African featherfin catfish is nocturnal so when the lights are off he normally harasses the others while they sleep and they will literally jump out of the water and hit the hood loudly, my dog will bark, then the whole house wakes up. But since the catfish had the ich the worst he never moved from his position in the corner of the tank that night so they were able to sleep peacefully and reduce stress, which reduced susceptibility to ich. Woo.)
