ICH progression during heat treatment

Hi,

It's been about a week since I started heat treatment in my QT for ich. The temperature has been maintained at 86F and I've gravel vacuumed 3x since last Saturday. The QT has 1 cory and 3 black neons and they are very active and don't appear to be stressed.

The thing is, the neons keep forming new white spots, which disappear and new ones form. Just this morning, one of them has a new white spot.

Is this the natural progression of the disease during heat treatment or is something off?
And the cory hasn't even developed any ich spots yet.

Do I need to increase the heat by a couple of degrees more? And can the fish handle that?

Thanks!

 

Well I'm no expert but I believe this is mostly normal. The ich inside the fish create those reproductive cysts on the fish's fins. These cysts then drop down onto the gravel and in 1-2 days release about 600 more ich into the water. However the water temp prevents this cyst bursting. The worms that are in the fish live for 3-7 days and therefore could be at the end of their life cycle now and producing the last of the cysts. Heat treatment should probably last 4-7 more days past when you see the last white spot. I would not recommend raising the temperature anymore. The cory may never get ich because you must have caught it early enough that the heat prevented the cysts from bursting and finding the cory. Just last week I did a heat treatment on my 20 gallon, I caught it so early that only two fish were ever infected and I got it at just the right time so that the whole thing was over in about 3 days (as in no more symptoms).

 

lastly: make sure the heating is steady and constant. Make sure the heater is in a central location so that there are no cold spots in the tank. You may wanna take temperature readings from each corner of the tank as well as from the center.

 

Thanks fishcrazy99 for your feedback. So, at a high enough temperature, these reproductive cysts cannot be released but end up just dying inside the fish? But, I guess, they can still grow within the fish since these white spots can get bigger.

 

Heres the life cycle to my understanding starting with the cysts which are esecially eggs. The "eggs" release a large amount of the parasite after 1-2 days but this can't be done at high temperatures because they have no way of regulating their temperature and they cannot withstand heat. However when the disease has made its way into the aquarium the "egg" releases hundreds of ich which then seek out hosts. Once on the host they mate and eat for 4-7 days, heat treatment does not affect this lifestage because the fish is regulating the temperature for them. They die after this stage so stopping reproduction is affective treatment. They produce cysts that we see on the fishes fins where they develop and fall off into the gravel to start the cycle over.