Only a few survivors...

Long story short...

Noticed some white spots on my cardinal tetras about 3 weeks ago. Turned the water temp up, treated the tank with API and the Marineland brand ich treatments over the course two weeks. Did daily 25%-50% WC during treatment. All carbon removed out of filters.

All in all, lost all 15 Cardinals, 6 tiger barbs, and 5 SterbaI cory cats.

The troopers that made it are 1 tiger barb, 1 SterbaI and my Tiger Pleco!!!

The cory seems super active and the Tiger barb has no more spots on him and is starting to swim away from the corner he has been stuck in for a few weeks. His tail is in bad shape, but he seems to be swimming better everyday. The pleco was spotted with white dots VERY BADLY and is completely cleared now and seems active and back to his shy self!!

How long should I wait before introducing new fish to the tank? I know the cory wants his friends back, but I want to make sure everything is cleared up.

What would you do??

P.S. I bought the Cardinals from liveaquaria three weeks prior and they were the first fish to show the spots, so I think they were the ones to infect the tank. It really sucks because the whole tank was getting along so well. The barbs were being good!!

 

Not sure how long you should wait to add new fish, hopefully someone else has ich experience and can speak to that. But I do know that you definitely want to quarantine any new fish before adding them so that this doesn't happen again. I learned the hard way about having a QT/Hospital tank set up BEFORE any issues occur. Any time you have multiple fish in a tank, you'll want to have a separate QT tank ready to go. Good luck!

 

Did you inspect the fish before adding them to your tank?
Also make sure you don't add the water they came in to the tank, if you can Set up a QT tank.
I'm sure the past few weeks you've learned a lot about ich and its life cycle.
I would wait at least a week with the temp still elevated and wait to see if the fish stay clear, then lower the temp down and add carbon back to your filters to remove any remaining meds.

Additionally tiger barbs can be pretty aggressive and you should keep the, in larger schools than 6, I think the minimum reccomended size is 10.

 

It sounds like you did the right thing to treat the Ich...maybe you just got bad stock for the cardinals?

Also, I don't know if this contributed to the fish loss, but you need more tiger barbs to be able to co-exist with the peaceful cardinals....10-15 at least.

 

Did you inspect the fish before adding them to your tank?
Also make sure you don't add the water they came in to the tank, if you can Set up a QT tank.
I'm sure the past few weeks you've learned a lot about ich and its life cycle.
I would wait at least a week with the temp still elevated and wait to see if the fish stay clear, then lower the temp down and add carbon back to your filters to remove any remaining meds.

Additionally tiger barbs can be pretty aggressive and you should keep the, in larger schools than 6, I think the minimum reccomended size is 10.

The fish looked fine when they were put in! Noticed the problem after about two weeks. I akways do a float acumate and net the fish in.

I had 7 barbs and they were terrors for a few days, but gave up chasing everyone! Thanks for the advise!