Fish in QT thinking red columbian tetras might have ich NEED HELP ASAP

[platytetrafan]

Ok I was just checking out the fish I have in my 10g QT one of the red columbian tetras has white spots on its fins looks like dorsal fin ventral fin and two bilat fins. Nothing on the body it looks like kosher salt. One of the other tetras I noticed has one white spot on the bottom fin. I am thinking this is ich but am not sure. The spots are not yellow so I don't think this is velvet.

I am so pissed water temp was 80 degrees I just pushed it up a notch. I did a water change on Sunday everything was fine. I tested the water today no ammonia the fish are swimming around ok but since I have gold gouramie and a dwarf gouramie in the tank too am not sure how to treat the tank. I want to try to get rid of this quickly.

I want to prevent the gouramie from coming down with the ich but am not sure if they can tolerate aquarium salt. I have that in the house and I also have aquarisol which is good for ich and protozoan parasites. I am so bad at diagnosing diseases but when I saw the white spots I figure post a pic and see what you guys say. Please respond right away I need help and am freaking out. First time I have ever encountered this problem need help to treat. Thanks see below I took some pics of the fish let me know what you think if you agree it is ich and what I should do to treat.

 

[ducatigirl]

I have been treating white spot for what seems like forever!
I have done the salt and increased heat, my dwarf gouramis are fine, even after a month of salt, then meth blue, then rapid white spot remedy, and they have survived it all.
I lost 2 gold rams who didn't appear to even have the spots.
This was my first white spot episode, so I guess I didnt keep the treatments consistent enough. learnt alot since.
I have read some great pages on white spot. click on my blog, theres 2 links there.
I hope you get it sorted quickly.
Thank god and your good sense to have QT them

 

[platytetrafan]

Yeah well after making a few mistakes when I first started in the hobby I quickly learned not a good idea to dump fish from the LFS into your healthy main tank. My hubby thought I was nuts when I brought home the 10g qt but I knew better and showed him tonight see what can happen and this is after the fish had been quarantined for 3 weeks with weekly wc's and really good care. It can happen anyway. Ich!!!! but atleast it is the QT and not my beautiful, healthy 36g tank which these fish will eventually go but once they are ich free. I am adding the salt now and raised the temp will do a wc on Friday night and again on Sunday adding salt each time. Hoping I can knock this out real fast. So far no white spot on the gouramie will have to watch them and one tetra is spot free will see what happens.

 

[rstrobel]

It looks like ich to me. In my experience, it usually is visible first on the fins and later on their body. Were the gouramies in a separate tank at the store? If so, they may not be infected yet, I would move them into another QT tank if you can ASAP.


Just a hint, don't do anything too drastic. You seem to have done your research on how to cure it, but drastic changes in temperature, adding a bunch of salt, etc. will just stress the fish and make them weaker. If you catch the parasite early on, which you have done, you should have plenty of time to treat it.

 

[BondDouble08]

From what I can see it looks like a minor outbreak of ich, but very minor I'm glad you caught the problem so quickly.

As for treating the ich there's 3 remedies I've tried myself

Ofcourse 1.) salt (I think your guarmi should be fine, scaleless fishes/snails/crustasions/etc are sensitive to salt but most can handle it. Just be careful with how much, and know alot of times people put it too little to affect the problem anyway.

2.) Heat - helps spead up the life cycle of ich and they mostly have a small tolerence of high heat (there are heat resistant ich - very rare) temp must be raised to about 83-84 F to fill the ich in the free swimming stage

3.) commercial products - I personally used Jungle parasite clear and it worked great.

(All 3 will stress out the fish so look for any signs in your fish of ill tolerance)

Overall, just remember 95% of the time whatever you decide to go with you are only killing the ich that is floating in the water, the white dots are the parasite buried in the fishes skin too far for treatment to have affect. So if you choose heat or salt CONTINUE treatment for another weak AFTER the dots are gone. Medication will tell you on the package how long for treatment.

I turned the heat up to about 80-81 deg F to speed up the life cycle and treated with parasite clear.

But like I said you caught this problem early and you should be fine ; )

Hope everything works out and hope to see your post of success!

 

[platytetrafan]

Thanks so much I decided to use heat and salt first. Unfortunately I don't have another qt and another member of the forum already told me that even though the gouramie are not showing spots yet they have been exposed better to keep the fish all together watch for any signs of ich in them treat them preventatively along with the affected fish. I intend on keeping them in QT atleast another 4 weeks post ich. Yeah have been checking them daily thank god I looked at them tonight and saw the spots on the 2 tetras so I could treat early. One isn't showing signs of spots along with the gouramie but better to treat preventatively. Wish me luck I hope I can knock it out quick. Will let you know how it goes .

 

[platytetrafan]

yeah am so happy looked tonight and the white spots are gone on the tetra affected the gouramies so far no problem so glad I caught this early. But I am keeping the fish in QT one more month just to be sure but am so happy I caught it early the aquarium salt raising the temp and wc's did the trick so far keeping my fingers crossed .