Loaches Online Forum

Well it looks like I may have the dreaded ich in my tank. Despite quarantining my new clowns for 8 weeks with a double dose of worming and white spot treatments a month or so into their new surroundings some of them seem to have developed ich. One has maybe 15 spots, another half a dozen and a third has a couple, their behaviour is normal, though some flashing, and they feed well. However my 11 adult clowns seem to be ich free at the moment, so I’m hoping I’ve caught this early. (I’m actually hoping/praying it’s not ich at all, but best to fear the worst, and I think I’m right). I’d love to show photos for confirmation, but my camera isn’t picking up the detail on the fish.

Tank parameters are pretty much normal too, pH is 7, nitrites <0.3mg/l, Ammonia 0, nitrates a little high at 25mg/l, KH was I think 3 with GH 6, though that could be the other way around as it’s from memory, I did the readings 2 days ago.

So I’ve immediately started to up the tank temperature, reduced the water level to increase aeration, there’s already a long air stone in the tank, and added eSha Exit white spot treatment, it’s the only one I have, does anyone have any experience with it, should I be half dosing as normally I full dose? No carbon in the filter either.

The big problem is it’s a 6ft tank, so a lot of water to treat and change, but there’s not a lot I can do about it, if ich is in there then it needs dealing with, and I don’t have the tank space to remove all the fish to smaller tanks.

One other question, if I remove most of the tank furniture will any ich on it die when it’s out of the water, and would I need to do any treatment to it before returning it to the tank? I was thinking just blast it with hot water prior to it’s return.

Anything else I should be doing, I thought I’d hold off of salt at the moment as it’s currently a small outbreak, I hope to contain with the existing treatment?

I left 60% of water in the tank during the treatments. Alot less water and medication this way. Definitely remove all the decorations in the tank to promote water flow for medication to work better. I left my decoration dry and that should kill all the ich after treamts are done.

Ich cannot live without a host, and on dry decorations, so your idea of a hot water rinse, then dry until the medication has done its job will be all you need to do.

If you can vacuum the floor of the tank as frequently as you can this will remove the Ich that falls off the fish. If you can do it every other day you might get rid of quite a few of them before they breed.

Hi. I swear by Protozin by Waterlife which you can get as you're in the UK.

Thanks for your comments, this eSha Exit seems to be working quite well. Not seeing any further spots on the small guys, with most dwindling in numbers and still nothing visible on the big guys.

Early days but hopefully this is already the beginning of the end of my nightmare.