Trying to treat ick or something similar and losing

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masrock
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2016 6:46 pm

Trying to treat ick or something similar and losing

Post by masrock » Wed Apr 06, 2016 5:00 pm

Another dead clown loach this morning.

Image

2 weeks ago I notices white spots on their fins and body. Since then I've raised the tank temp to 84F, removed the carbon from the filter ,added 1.5 tablets if tetra ick guard to my 30gallon tank (1/2 recommended dose) with 15ml stress coat and a cycle treatment with 5gallon daily water changes with gravel vacuum. I've lost three out of six now. I thought that I've been doing the correct treatments but I'm still losing them. They are about 2" long so still young. I found one as a white slimey ball under one of my plants in a corner, the other 2 I removed as soon as I found their corpses.

It's getting desperate, I'm quite attached to my loaches but I'm a novice to aquariums - had the tank going for about 1year.

Any advice appreciated.
I've read the locked post on this site for ick treatment, I guess I'm doing the right thing. More or less. Can anyone confirm ick from the above image- loach on the right? -hidden when viewed on a phone.
Masrock

Diana
Posts: 4675
Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2006 1:35 am
Location: Near San Franciso

Re: Trying to treat ick or something similar and losing

Post by Diana » Thu Apr 07, 2016 12:39 am

It sure looks like Ich.
I would increase the treatment dose, or switch to something that you can use full dose.
Here is one way to dose:

Add 50% of the day's dose in the AM, then 50% in the PM.

Many meds bread down through the day, so the instructions say to dose a high dose once a day, knowing that through the course of the day the medicine is breaking down. As it breaks down it will reach a point of not being effective, unless you re-dose. They figure this out very carefully, and tell you how to dose once a day.
But that once a day dose is too strong for some fish. If you dose 50%, then it breaks down to the point of being ineffective sooner, so you have to dose again, sooner.
But you are not subjecting the fish to the very high dose once a day. You are adding a tolerable dose, twice a day.
38 tanks, 2 ponds over 4000 liters of water to keep clean and fresh.

Happy fish keeping!

masrock
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2016 6:46 pm

Re: Trying to treat ick or something similar and losing

Post by masrock » Thu Apr 07, 2016 11:41 am

Thanks for the reply.
I lost another loach this morning and a rubber lips pleico. Down to two clown loaches. I was trying to get a group of six going but the pet stores In Tulsa only have one about 1inch long that don't survive very well.

I'll keep going with the treatment in the hope that my last two survive.

Thanks again

Masrock

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