Ick Worse Case Scenario

I have a 10 gallon tank with a bad ick breakout. There are 3 guppies in the tank that aren't looking good. I've been treating the tank for about a week with super ick cure (and water changes) without much luck so far.

If worse case all guppies die, how can I re-establish the tank without losing my good bb in the process? Can I wait two weeks and starve out the ick, meanwhile "feeding" the good BB fish food to keep them alive?

 

Ich needs a live fish to survive, so you should be able to feed pure ammonia to keep your cycle alive in the case all of your fish die. Keep that up for about 2-4 weeks then you should be able to put new fish in. Did you remove your carbon from your filter?

 

if you don't remove the carbon from the filter the treatment won't work....it is actually important to say us if you removed the carbon before the treatment

 

I raise the water temp to 86 degrees for 2 weeks and/or 10 days after the last sign of ICH. I use no meds or salt although some people do. Heat has always worked for me.

ICH (ICK) Life Cycle and Natural Treatment

 

Here is what I would do.
Do a water change, and then add carbon to the filter to remove the the medicine you used.
Slowly raise the temperature to 86° and keep it there for full two weeks.
During this time, you will have to vacuum the substrate everyday or every other day to make sure that you get rid of any cysts that fall off.
Also it's possible that the Ich will get worse, before it gets better. To add to that, if the Ich is cleared up before the two weeks is up, DO NOT stop the the heat treatment, make sure to go the full two weeks.
Once the two weeks is up, (I'd give it a day or two more), the Ich should be gone.
Do another water change of at least 50, along with vacuuming the substrate.

 

Thanks everyone. Yeah, I removed the filter but didn't raise the water temperature so I'll do that as well.

 

Do not remove the filter. Keep the filter running.
Just add the carbon to the filter remove the medicine from the tank. Then use the heat treatment.

 

Removing the filter will kill all of the BB, which could completely destroy your cycle since the majority of BB lives in the filter.

Just take the carbon out of the filter and keep it running, that's all that's needed. If the filter is dried out then your BB is dead. Plus if the filter didn't have a source of ammonia for 1 week and is still wet then a good majority of the BB is dead.

 

The bb will not survive 24 hrs without a food source. If your doing meds you want the temp around 82 degrees to speed up the parasite life cycle without making the medicine toxic. If you don't raise the temperature you can expect to treat for more than a month.

 

Just to add more detail, I have a bio-wheel filter. So when I said I removed the filter, I meant that I removed the carbon filter. The bio-wheel is still going so the bb should be still ok.