I hate ich. I think that most tropical fish enthusiasts probably feel the same way, but today, I REALLY hate those little, white, single-celled fish killers with a passion.
I've been keeping fish off and on for 25 years, and while I consider myself an amateur in the hobby, I'm not totally ignorant about it. I know how to keep fish healthy, or I thought I did. The basics are covered: 7.5 pH, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, nitrates usually around 20, temp at 78 F. Not bad for what is essentially a slightly overstocked tank filled with messy eaters that know how to beg more food from me.
My one crucial mistake, due to space and budget limitations as opposed to me not wanting to do things correctly, was a failure to quarantine a new pleco I added 6 weeks ago. Despite having come from a very good LFS where he was in a tank full of healthy looking fish, himself included, he was carrying the new, treatment resistant "super-ich". Of course, I didn't know this at the time. I didn't even know of its existence.
Several days later, the pleco started showing the classic signs of ich: listlessness, rapid respiration, and white spots on his body. Oh, joy. He was in a 90 gallon tank with 19 loaches and 6 other catfish - An ich breeding ground if there ever was one. I immediately started the usual treatments, the ones I had used successfully for 25 years: Heat and salt, carefully administering both to be certain not to stress any of the fish beyond their limits. The ich continued to spread, until such time as I cranked the heat all the way up to 87 F, at which time the ich seemed to die off. Unfortunately, so did the pleco, the very fish who's introduction helped cause this mess in the first place. I left the tank at that temperature for a full 2 weeks, believing that it would kill off all of the ich.
By this time, a month has gone by from the initial infection, all of the fish are acting healthy and happy (except the dead pleco, of course), and I figured that I had the problem fixed. Naturally, I started to slowly lower the water temp back down to normal.
4 days later, just as the tank is settling back around 78 F, one of my featherfin catfish started to scratch himself on the rocks. My heart sank, as I observed several small white spots on his left flank. Okay, this means war. Now, how do I poison the ich without poisoning the fish? I spent close to an hour talking to the fish health specialist at the LFS, and Kordon Ich-Attack was recommended. The first few doses seemed to work. The infected featherfin stopped flashing, and went back to normal behavior. I would have been relieved, but the next day I noticed that some of my clown loaches were starting to show signs of infection (again).
This ich is spreading while being medicated.
It was about this time that I learned about the existence of "super-ich", and I realized that this is almost certainly the strain that is infesting my tank. Fantastic. The LFS is currently working on getting their hands on some quinine sulfate. With any luck, that will be effective, if I can even afford it. In the mean time, I am slowly bringing the temp back up to the high 80's. Hopefully, this will kill off a majority of the ich again, or at the very least accelerate the ich's life cycle to the point where my fish who's gills are loaded will have a better chance of survival. I'm doing small daily water changes and vacuuming the gravel, which is actually part of my normal routine anyway. I've allowed the salt level to slowly drop with water changes, but I may start adding more again.
I'm open to suggestions, because banging my head against the wall is ineffective but it's all I can think to do at this point.
I do have a quarantine tank now, even though it meant donating my secondary tank to my son so that his smaller tank could be employed as the Q-tank. A day late and a dollar short in this case, however.
Rant over.
