Will a raise in temp fix a mild case of ick?

I have a new tank, with 6 xray tetras and a bristlenose pleco. They have all been in there for 2 weeks. A few of them are showing signs of ick. They have 1 or 2 small white spots each. I'm pretty sure that's what it is. Would an increase in temperature fix this or should I immediately start meds? I don't mind treating with meds, but I want to use the method which will cause the least amount of stress

 

Hiya , it seems with that stocking the heat method would work, for a mild case. 2 weeks , over 30c with a substrate vac every two days worked for me. Once you understand the life cycle of ich it makes sense, you can only catch it once it drops off the fish. There's 3 life stages( I’ll just do basics ) , one infects the fish ( that’s when you see the white spots , not actually the ich itself just the fishes reaction to it ), then it reproduces and drops off the fish ( vacuum them up ), then the free swimming stage ( if you don’t vac ) which re-infects the fish. The heat just speeds up the life cycle.

There is a heat resistant strain of ich I believe , but I suppose that depends on where abouts in the world you are !
Flyfisha is usually great at advice for ich . Hope you don’t mind the tag

 

86 - 87 degrees for ten days should be enough to rid the tank of early stage Ich.

 

Thank you both! That's all great info! How slowly do I up the temp?

 

Just set your heater to the appropriate temperature range and let it go. That should be gradual enough.

 

Hi all,
I don’t mind the tag Blacksheep1.
I saw this post when it was first posted. My immediate thought was .

The fish have been in the tank for 2 weeks. How can it be ich if there are only one or two spots per fish? The ich parasites multiply fast in tropical water temperatures.

I would like to see a picture before I say the fish are infested with a deadly parasite.

I have no experience using heat to stop ich breeding.

I have never heard of the term “early stage ich “ . It’s a deadly parasite that has killed some of my fish within two weeks of buying them a auction.

As someone who lives in a hot summer climate and deals with extreme temperatures in summer I will say 87 F / 30 c is stressful on fish and hard on plants.

 

I just thought the ‘ early stage ‘ comment was just the first signs and spotted early. A picture would definately help, but as the member was a 5 year member I just assumed they’d been around long enough to correctly assume

I know you’re used to dealing with higher temps so immediately thought of you

 

hi blue raccoon. there is no stress free method but neither species listed is very good with meds really. Ich itself is a stresser.

all heat does is speed up the life cycle of the ich in most cases. you'd need to hit 86F to get a killing effect on it when it's in freswimming stage after the white spots have fallen off. the only stage of it's life cycle where it's vulnerable to the meds or heat is when it's freeswimming.

Plenty suggest raising the temp to 80F and treating with meds for a 1-2 punch that is effective, the meds will be a problem for the fish you keep though.

What I would do if I'm going to try to manage this with heat alone. if you use CO2, turn it off, and add aeration, as much as you can. Higher temps = lower dissolved oxygen in the water, you want to add more O2 however you can for high range temp treatments

the method I've used: no more than 2 degrees in temperature up or down in under 3 hours.

if no QT tank, and fish are med intolerant but ok with hotter water, you can try raising the temp to 80F for the duration with 24 hour spikes up to 89F and back down again, 12 hours up, 12 hours back down.
DEPENDING ON THE SPECIES KEPTS HEAT TOLERANCE.

the ich is going to speed up and at first it's going to look worse, but as the temp kills some freeswimmers each time, the quantity should get less and less that re-attach to the fish and form white spots again. once you get the timing rhythm down for what form the ich is in, you can adjust the temp up sooner and back down again, which will interfere with the reproduction and lower their reproduction rate, less new free swimmers reattaching, and more freeswimmers killed before reattaching to the fish.

In the free swimming stage, the parasite must find a host within two days or it dies, and the tomont (cyst in the substrate or on surfaces) lives about 2 weeks at lower temps in that stage, at higher temps like 70-77F, it takes like 3-7 days to life cycle, at 80F or above 3-4 to go full cycle..... shortly above 85F it's hard the Ich to really survive it though for very long without protection. Keeping fish in that hot of water can be problematic for a couple weeks stints though. I wouldn't try it unless its a labyrinth fish that can take air from the surface or if I have a lot of additional aeration to get O2 into the water, the water isn't going to want to hold Oxygen, maybe with some really tropical fish that like the water hotter would be ok short term.


the treatment method in a nutshell is basically raising the temp to 83F for two weeks, daily water changes 25-50% and daily bottom vacuums , to suck out as many of the ich as you can, and then cycling the temp up to 80F for the tomonts to fall off the fish, and then 12 hours to raise the temp slowly from 80F to 89F, which should interrupt the ichs reproduction phase and cut it nearly in half, and then kill a lot of them when they freeswim to re attach to a host fish and this is cycled up and down in 4 day periods. say 3 days at 83F, one day cycling up to 89F and back down to 83F. this keeps them at killing temps for most of a 24 hour period while the fish only has a short time ramping up to extreme heat of near 90F and then coming back down again, the whole time it's running on that day 4 it's either encysted ich that poorly reproducing, or emerging freeswimers in water that's just too hot for them, but not quite too hot for the fish for that 24 hour period.

that's what I know, I've had luck with this method in the past treating ich with heat in the U.S.
I've heard the ich in Australia is much more resistant to heat and it doesn't work, I've heard the UK has a rough time treating ich with temperature also.

By day 8 and 2nd lifecycle down, you have paid enough attention to the life cycle that you can predict when the white spots drop off, and when they appear again on the fish, and by then fine tune the highest temp window from 86F to 89F to when they are freswimming and looking for a host to attach to. you'll be killing them the first two cycles also, but 3rd cycle is the opportunity to eradicate, and 4th lifecycle is "for good measure and any stragglers" you probably won't even see reattachment after the 3rd lifecycle of this if you time it right.


Anyways, prevention is the best way to avoid ich in your tank, Quarantine new fish. best of luck to you howevery you choose to deal with it, this is one of those things where it's "what works for me, might have different results for you" situations. there's no one size fits all answer, you just have to pick one and go with it, and hope it works out. doing nothing I'm sure the fish will die from the Ich, doing something they may or may not die regardless of how you choose to treat them

if you decide to use meds, I'd just say take into consideration that the tanks "size" is different from it's "volume" or "displacement for rocks and substrate and plants volume of water"
dosing meds can be tricky for this reason and a person can overdo it.

 

I have no interest in starting a war of words on the correct way to solve the issue of these parasites.

I will say I have used the Australian brands of medication that have malachite green and formaldehyde as the active ingredients multiply times at a full strength dose every 3 days with water changes in tanks with tetras and bristlenose plecos and only once lost fish ( rams) that had an extreme infestation before I noticed it. The Australian brands also have a warning to use a half dose on tetras .

 

I apologize if I sound ignorant, lol. I don't know much of anything about this. All I know is that it's common, and I bought API Super Ick Cure before buying fish to be prepared. I have five years of experience because of a pleco I owned, who never got ick. This is a picture of a spot. It's on the tail. Three of them have one spot on the tail. I also GREATLY appreciate all the info. You all have been so helpful. Also, I will quarentine. These were the first fish put into the tank. They were all put in at the same time, and they all came from the same store, running on the same system. The picture isn't great. It's not as noticeable in person.

 

My initial reaction was "there is no such thing as a mild case of ich". The ich symptoms we observe are the cysts embedded on the skin of the fish. What we cannot see without a microscope are the other forms the parasite takes during its life cycle.

While it might be possible to raise the temperature hot enough to kill the parasites, the primary reason it is recommended to raise the temperature is to speed up the "hatching" of the cysts. While the parasites are protected within the covering of the cyst, there is nothing you can do to treat them. It is only when those cysts "hatch" and release the tomite phase of the parasite that treatment is possible. Once the parasites are in the tomite stage, there are treatments available that can kill them. However, with the inclusion of plecos in the tank, you have to be careful as the plecos are armoured catfish that have bony plates rather than scales. Thus, their skin is very sensitive to salt and some common ich treatments.

One common mistake fishkeepers make is in assuming that ich has been "cured" when they no longer observe the cysts on the fish. You need to continue the treatment for several weeks to insure that all parasites in every stage of the life cycle have been killed. When no cysts have been observed over a monthly period, you can safely assume you are rid of these common parasites.

 

My initial reaction was "there is no such thing as a mild case of ich". The ich symptoms we observe are the cysts embedded on the skin of the fish. What we cannot see without a microscope are the other forms the parasite takes during its life cycle.

While it might be possible to raise the temperature hot enough to kill the parasites, the primary reason it is recommended to raise the temperature is to speed up the "hatching" of the cysts. While the parasites are protected within the covering of the cyst, there is nothing you can do to treat them. It is only when those cysts "hatch" and release the tomite phase of the parasite that treatment is possible. Once the parasites are in the tomite stage, there are treatments available that can kill them. However, with the inclusion of plecos in the tank, you have to be careful as the plecos are armoured catfish that have bony plates rather than scales. Thus, their skin is very sensitive to salt and some common ich treatments.

One common mistake fishkeepers make is in assuming that ich has been "cured" when they no longer observe the cysts on the fish. You need to continue the treatment for several weeks to insure that all parasites in every stage of the life cycle have been killed. When no cysts have been observed over a monthly period, you can safely assume you are rid of these common parasites.

So to make sure I understand....are you saying I need to wait until more spots appear to treat? Or did I misunderstand?

I have no interest in starting a war of words on the correct way to solve the issue of these parasites.

I will say I have used the Australian brands of medication that have malachite green and formaldehyde as the active ingredients multiply times at a full strength dose every 3 days with water changes in tanks with tetras and bristlenose plecos and only once lost fish ( rams) that had an extreme infestation before I noticed it. The Australian brands also have a warning to use a half dose on tetras .

Thanks! The medicine I have is malachite green. It says half does for scaleless fish, and since tetras are sensitive, it sounds like half a dose is best.

hi blue raccoon. there is no stress free method but neither species listed is very good with meds really. Ich itself is a stresser.

all heat does is speed up the life cycle of the ich in most cases. you'd need to hit 86F to get a killing effect on it when it's in freswimming stage after the white spots have fallen off. the only stage of it's life cycle where it's vulnerable to the meds or heat is when it's freeswimming.

Plenty suggest raising the temp to 80F and treating with meds for a 1-2 punch that is effective, the meds will be a problem for the fish you keep though.

What I would do if I'm going to try to manage this with heat alone. if you use CO2, turn it off, and add aeration, as much as you can. Higher temps = lower dissolved oxygen in the water, you want to add more O2 however you can for high range temp treatments

the method I've used: no more than 2 degrees in temperature up or down in under 3 hours.

if no QT tank, and fish are med intolerant but ok with hotter water, you can try raising the temp to 80F for the duration with 24 hour spikes up to 89F and back down again, 12 hours up, 12 hours back down.
DEPENDING ON THE SPECIES KEPTS HEAT TOLERANCE.

the ich is going to speed up and at first it's going to look worse, but as the temp kills some freeswimmers each time, the quantity should get less and less that re-attach to the fish and form white spots again. once you get the timing rhythm down for what form the ich is in, you can adjust the temp up sooner and back down again, which will interfere with the reproduction and lower their reproduction rate, less new free swimmers reattaching, and more freeswimmers killed before reattaching to the fish.

In the free swimming stage, the parasite must find a host within two days or it dies, and the tomont (cyst in the substrate or on surfaces) lives about 2 weeks at lower temps in that stage, at higher temps like 70-77F, it takes like 3-7 days to life cycle, at 80F or above 3-4 to go full cycle..... shortly above 85F it's hard the Ich to really survive it though for very long without protection. Keeping fish in that hot of water can be problematic for a couple weeks stints though. I wouldn't try it unless its a labyrinth fish that can take air from the surface or if I have a lot of additional aeration to get O2 into the water, the water isn't going to want to hold Oxygen, maybe with some really tropical fish that like the water hotter would be ok short term.


the treatment method in a nutshell is basically raising the temp to 83F for two weeks, daily water changes 25-50% and daily bottom vacuums , to suck out as many of the ich as you can, and then cycling the temp up to 80F for the tomonts to fall off the fish, and then 12 hours to raise the temp slowly from 80F to 89F, which should interrupt the ichs reproduction phase and cut it nearly in half, and then kill a lot of them when they freeswim to re attach to a host fish and this is cycled up and down in 4 day periods. say 3 days at 83F, one day cycling up to 89F and back down to 83F. this keeps them at killing temps for most of a 24 hour period while the fish only has a short time ramping up to extreme heat of near 90F and then coming back down again, the whole time it's running on that day 4 it's either encysted ich that poorly reproducing, or emerging freeswimers in water that's just too hot for them, but not quite too hot for the fish for that 24 hour period.

that's what I know, I've had luck with this method in the past treating ich with heat in the U.S.
I've heard the ich in Australia is much more resistant to heat and it doesn't work, I've heard the UK has a rough time treating ich with temperature also.

By day 8 and 2nd lifecycle down, you have paid enough attention to the life cycle that you can predict when the white spots drop off, and when they appear again on the fish, and by then fine tune the highest temp window from 86F to 89F to when they are freswimming and looking for a host to attach to. you'll be killing them the first two cycles also, but 3rd cycle is the opportunity to eradicate, and 4th lifecycle is "for good measure and any stragglers" you probably won't even see reattachment after the 3rd lifecycle of this if you time it right.


Anyways, prevention is the best way to avoid ich in your tank, Quarantine new fish. best of luck to you howevery you choose to deal with it, this is one of those things where it's "what works for me, might have different results for you" situations. there's no one size fits all answer, you just have to pick one and go with it, and hope it works out. doing nothing I'm sure the fish will die from the Ich, doing something they may or may not die regardless of how you choose to treat them

if you decide to use meds, I'd just say take into consideration that the tanks "size" is different from it's "volume" or "displacement for rocks and substrate and plants volume of water"
dosing meds can be tricky for this reason and a person can overdo it.

Thank you. These were my first fish, so this was kind of my quarantine. This is very help. You've given me a lot of consider.

 

That new picture does not look like ich BlueRaccoon.

The spots on the fins are not ich.

I forget the exact name of that but it’s something that comes and goes on fish.

edit
To ask if the white patch is fluffy? Equals fungus.

 

I agree it may not be Ich, any chance of some more pics?

Ich looks like grains of salt sprinkled on the body or fins. I'm not seeing that, except perhaps the spot on the tail, but the pic is not very clear.

 

Well that's good to know! I'll try to get another picture. They just move too fast, lol. They are still nervous around me. So I'm assuming that if it was ick, they would quickly have lots of white spots, correct? If I don't see a lot more very soon, they probably don't have ick? Thanks for all the help and suggestions. Oh, and it doesn't appear to be fluffy at all. It's very small, and very flat from what I can tell.

 

If it is ich, the infection will spread rapidly. If you are sure it is ich, raise the temperature and start your treatment with the half dose of malachite green immediately. Do not forget to remove any activated carbon from your tank and filters as it will absorb the medication. Keep treating the tank until all evidence of the infection has been absent for a few weeks. Once the treatment is completed, do a large water change and add activated carbon to the filter to remove any remaining medication.

 

If it is ich, the infection will spread rapidly. If you are sure it is ich, raise the temperature and start your treatment with the half dose of malachite green immediately. Do not forget to remove any activated carbon from your tank and filters as it will absorb the medication. Keep treating the tank until all evidence of the infection has been absent for a few weeks. Once the treatment is completed, do a large water change and add activated carbon to the filter to remove any remaining medication.

Thank you! This is helpful!
Hopefully this is better. Two of the fish no longer have spots on their tails.
I'm honestly wondering if they just have stuff stuck to them. There is little stuff stuck to the biofilm, and my pleco is dirty from playing in it and being on the plant substrate.