Loaches Online Forum

I have a group of 5 clown loaches for almost 2 years now, i encountered ich for the first time back then, i treated the fish for four days and ich dissapeared, everything was fine until i made the huge mistake of getting my loaches a few snails from the LFS, as a treat since i never gave them snails before, big time error, four weeks ago one of the loaches had some ich spots, i immediatly started treating with Kordon Rid-ich, but seems to me that i happened to be lucky enough to get the worst type of Ich, in just one week all the loaches were completly infested(even with medication), treated full dose every 24 hours, raised temperature to 84 degrees, lower the water level to get splash from the filter to get some extra O2, but fishes kept getting worse, at one point they were so letargic i was sure they all were doomed.
Then i switched treatment to every 12 hours (full dose), still no luck overall.

Now it's four weeks, 2 of the loaches are completely clean, 2 keep getting infested, and the other was already cured, but today i see Ich is attaching to it like the first day.
I am so tired of the daily water changes, that i'm considering switching to the organic Ich-Attack.

I don't see any other way to fight this pest, i'm doing everything that is in the book.

Anybody had any luck with organic Ich treatment?

Hello,

perhaps you need to change your ich medication. I have always had good luck with eSHa Exit. It is absolutely imperative that you continue treating for at least 3 days after any ich "dots" you can observe are gone.

Daily water changes are IMHO not necessary (a big change at the beginning and at the end of the treatment is adviseable though), aeration is. The biggest problem is that the ich medicine is very toxic to fish in general and clowns in particular, so it's often a kind of race what kills them first. :-/ This makes it very important to kill the disease as quickly as possible.


-Connor

Thanks for replying, as i said, i started dosing every 24 hours, and the loaches were pretty distressed, but now they tolerate the medication better so i'm doing it every 12 with water changes to reduce toxicity; and i still have recurrences. I can't think of a better medication, since Rid-Ich is a malachite green and formalin formula.
I will probably change medication just to give it a shot; the thing is that i don't want to put extra stress on the loaches by using different chemicals for so long.

I will definitely keep treating after all the spots are gone, but, given the persistence of this type of Ich in my tank, i don't see that happening anytime soon.

Just a quick question (and I'm sure you'll have already done this), but just in case - have you removed all activated carbon from your filter whilst treating?

Emma

Yes, 4 weeks not a single grain of carbon, i can't wait to kill this pest to put it back in my filter.

Ultra Violet. This will kill the free swimming stage that is re-infesting the fish.
Vacuuming the bottom frequently is important, because it is removing the Ich that falls to the bottom to reproduce.

UV, That's a very interesting suggestion, thanks,i will consider that.
I vacuum the gravel throughly every day, after feedings, my gravel must be the cleanest around; i'm literally sacrificing my social life for my fish, just to make sure i'm home to treat them every day at the same hour, that's why it amazes and upsets me on how difficult and persistent this outbreak is proving to be.

Hello "me too",

As you might know, formaline can affect your good bacteria. It is adviseble to check on NH3/NH4+ and NO2-.
I had a very bad Ich case on my loach tank about an year ago. After changing medication a couple times I finally got rid of it using a mix of Coper citrate + Acriflavin (3:1). As Loaches are most sensive to coper I used 1/3 dose during 5 days and lights off.

Good luck!

Yeah, i'm using bacteria supplement between water changes, i have two extra cycled bio wheels in another tank just in case the bacteria colony on the medicated tank suffers the effects of such a long period of time exposed to formalin, I'm really trying to do my best.
Now that you mention "lights off", at what extent does lightning affect Ich treatment?

Oodinium pilullaris may be present within Ictiophitirius multifilis. Both shows similar sysmptoms and can be misled. Oodinium is a phtosyntetic protozoa. So... without lights it can´t "eat".
I used lights off for 5 days here. Plants did not suffer much with that.

I fought a very, very long battle with velvet (6 months+ I believe, maybe longer). If you search you will see my posts. At first I wasn't sure what I was dealing with..I tried all kinds of meds, starting with ICH meds and went from there. I moved my 5 clown loaches into a 29g quarantine tank with a bare bottom and only a nice pvc tunnel arrangement for them to hide in. Wrapped the whole tank in black paper with tape accessible so I could check on them. I was advised not to raise them temp. I can barely remember all the meds I tried. At first I wasn't sure if it was ICH or velvet so I tried Rid Ich, some ICH meds from Jungle..others I'm sure. Then I moved to acriflavine, Velvet Guard and in desperation, Coppersafe. I did water changes all along but it was incredibly stressful. What finally did the trick was salt. Stopped all the meds and just used 1 teaspoon of salt per 5 gallons of water. Slow and steady. Miraculously all of my clowns survived. Good luck!

I have had few outbreaks of Ich in over 20years of keeping fish. I used to swear by King British WS 3. It always worked well and at half doses and a temp of 27-28°C usually beat it within a week. However after doing a lot of online research into the various methods people use I found that a method where you slowly raise the temp upto 31-32°C. At this temp most if not all the protozoa are either killed outright or slowly die as their respiratory and reproductive functions cease. You only need to hold the temp at this level for a short period and it is vitally important that you monitor the fish as much possible for any signs of stress. Heavy Aeration of the water is equally necessary with this method and after trialling it on two tanks and seeing the effect it has on the outbreak firsthand as well as people I have advised saying it has worked I would recommend this over any proprietary treatment where Loaches are amongst the tanks inhabitants.

Thanks for all the advice and useful responses, today the 2 most infected clowns are showing fewer spots, it seems i'm timing good the treatment with the free swimming stage of the ich, hopefully it'll keep working.
I have a Marineland heater that won't go past 86 degrees, for safety reasons i suppose, they are very good heaters.

Even with all the issues loaches have with ich, they are really worth keeping and caring for; it's funny how my other fishes have total resistance to ich, even with the medication and raised temp they show no signs of stress at all.

6 months of treatment, man, that's amazing, that really is commitment, congratulations!

I had a few outbreaks of ick back when I was new to aquariums. I haven’t had one since, until just recently with some new fish from the lfs. I am so glad I finally setup a QT or else it could have been very bad! But I figured since I had some $ invested in these fish (a large group of puntius denisoni) that I better do a QT and do it right. The very day I got them I saw a couple spots. I wasn’t sure yet, but then on the second day the spots were growing in numbers. By the end of the day I had a UV sterilizer on the QT tank (20g tank, Turbo Twist 9X UV). I bumped up the temp and dosed salt (I cant remember now for sure, think I only did 1/2 the recommended salt). It peaked the third day then started to diminish. it was gone in under a week and never came back. No meds. And now I have a UV for future use as needed. Petsmart also sells some good priced all in one submersible UV's, many use them and although per watt they aren’t as powerful, they do work and you don’t have to mess with plumbing them. Check there online site. Also diatom filters are suppose to be able to filter out ick as well.