help asap!! can spiny eels get ick?!

okay so I'm really worried!!
one of my temprary 10 gallon has ick! at least I'm pretty sure, only my rainbow shark had spots on him. My tire track eel was in there with him temporarily however, and now I'm worried he may be infected too. I was just going to move him to his new tank this week with an already established community but now I don't want to risk infecting that tank too. I'm worried about my tire track eel, I'm going to take 25% of the water from my 20g, put that in a spare 10 gallon with new gravel, and run the filter off my wild krib tank on it for a bit - All new materials, with hopefully some good bacteria. Then I'll add the heat... I know this is dangerous! My tire track eel isn't showing any signs of spots, has anyone ever heard of tire track eels and their tolerance to ick?? I don't want to stress him out too much, he's very shy and sometimes won't eat or come out of hididng for a few days if you mess with him, but he is my baby I need to protect him, any advice would be greatly appretiated! I'll be starting on the quarantine tomorrow morning.

 

Almost all fish are prone to Ick sadly and because eels don't have scales, they are more prone to fungus & bacterial disease. Also because they have no scales a lot of meds. can be harmful to them.

I don't have eels, but have found that adding aquarium salt (1 teaspoon for every 10 gallons) and turning the heat up to approx. 80-81* will often get rid of Ick, and doing regular p.w.changes.

Are you medicating the tank at the moment? moving the eel into an uncycled tank may cause him to get stressed which is a major cause of illness. If his immune system is good, he may not necessarily catch it, hopefully!!

 

After some careful thought I've decided on a new plan:

tomorrow morning, a good gravel vac + 50% water change

Then I'm going to do the salt/heat therapy. I had it in my 20 gallon long once, I did the salt thing and water changes for 2 weeks straight and got the temperature gradually up to 90 at one point! I lowered the water so there was more oxygen, fish were fine and are great and clean now. I keep the temp in the 20 at usually 85 normaly, my fish seem to like it that way. I hope my eel will be okay, I think I caught it real early.

here's a scary story tho: I read on a site that if one of your fish has ick that you can "baptize" it in a desperate attempt to rid a single fish of ick. I took my rainbow shark out into a small goldfish bowl type thing, I slowly added warm water letting it spill out over the sides... I let it get real warm, I think too warm :S suddenly my rainbow went upside down motionless!! I panicked and popped him into the quarantine tank where he sank to the bottom breathing and motionless. I checked back 5 mins later, still on his side not moving but still breathing. I left him for another 5 mins, came back and too my surprise he was swimming around the tank as nothing had happend, and no ick! AHH what a scare tho, my heart sank! Never try this at home!

 

A temperature of 83 degrees farenheit kills the ich that is freeswimming.

Ich has two stages:

One stage is the attached to the fish white spot stage, but they only last in that way for a while then that stage dies off. The freeswimming stage is the reproductive one, if they are all dead and you give the other fish 2 weeks at 83 degrees farenheit all ich will be gone, no point in medications (in my opinion) unless they are deathly ill from the ich.

 

I wouldn't use salt to treat ick. Just keeping the temp at least at 82-83 for 2 weeks is the best treatment. If you want to add something to help, there's an organic herbal med that's safe called Ich-Attack (Kordon makes it).

 

If I'm not mistaken Tire track eels don't have scales. It is not advisable to use salt on scaleless fish.
turning the temp up over 82F for 14 days and doing more frequent water changes and substrate vacuum will see him through. More water changes and vacuums are needed for two reasons 1) warm water holds less oxygen- water changes replenishes teh oxygen. 2) the vacuuming will remove dead ICH cysts and even some of the live ones that haven't attached to fish yet.
This needs to be done for 14 days because it will take that long for all the ICH cysts to go through their life stages and die. The raised temp makes them do this faster.
When using warm water for a treatment the heat has to be raised gradually, just pouring warmer water over him could really stress him out.
Some sharks when scared or threatened will play dead. Maybe that is what your shark was doing or maybe not
Carol