Cory ich treatment

[NobodyCares]

I recently noticed an outbreak of ich on some of my serpaes. So far only the tetras are visibly infected, but I began treatment as soon as I saw the characteristic salt-grain type sores. I've decided to try to stay away from malachite green or any other medication which could be toxic, and would kill all the plants in my heavily planted tank. My choice of treatment is simply raising water temp (the tank is at 82 F / 28 C at the moment) and adding salt. I have been adding one tablespoon of aquarium salt to the tank every 12 hours. Hopefully this treatment will speed up the life of the parasite and get the little buggers out into the water where the salt can pop them. My question is this, I have two cories in my tank. One is a leopard cory, the other is a bronze cory (I think). They both prefer cold water, and I've kept the tank at the lower end of the reccomended temperature for my chosen treatment because I don't want to risk their health and stress them out more than I have to. So far both cories seem happy enough, but I know that as a beginner I may not know the signs of a cory that's in trouble. I could move them to my small 12 gallon tank and treat more intensively, but that would definitely overcrowd my other tank, and so I'm reluctant to move them.

Any ideas? Would raising the temperature closer to 30C be safe for them, or is that too much? I've been dissolving the salt in aquarium water and adding it slowly, but it won't burn them will it? I've heard this can happen if they are exposed to salt which is added straight to the aquarium.

[OldMan]

For some good information on ich, try this site http://aquafacts.net/components/com_mam ... ex.php/Ich

[NobodyCares]

That is a very good site, and I feel a lot better now about choosing salt as my treatment. So far it seems that things are okay, and I believe that my ich is now in my substrate, reproducing and getting ready to move to the free-swimming stage. I'm happy to report that all my tetras appear alright again, and so far no other fish appear infected. Hopefully another five days of salt and I will be ich free. Keeping my fingers crossed!

[NobodyCares]

Bad news, I lost two cories today. My leopard cory was dead when I got up from work. She showed no visible signs of disease, in fact I didn't realize she was dead until one of my gouramis swam past her body and it rolled over... The bad news continued when I got home from work ~1 hour ago, my skunk cory, the little trooper who's been in the tank since the beginning was racing around the tank and bumping his head into the glass hard. I got everything together to do a water change, but before I could even begin to do anything he was upside down on the bottom of the tank, stone dead. So, now this stupid Ich has claimed two of my favorite fish, and I have no idea what to do... there are no outward signs of disease anymore, and I can't find anything on the internet that describes what's happened in my tank since the Ich treatment began. I'm so sad... RIP Beth and Speedy.

If anyone has any idea what's going on, please let me know. I don't want any of my fish to suffer, and they all seem fine... but so did my cories.

[nikelodeon79]

Personally, I would not use salt with cories. IMO, they tolerate higher temps a lot better than they do salt... I would stop the salt treatment, especially if there are no outward signs of ick. Fresh, clean water will probably be best, so my recommendation would be to do some water changes.

You might want to get to the bottom of why your tank got ick in the first place. Have you introduced any new fish recently? What are your water parameters? (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate)

[NobodyCares]

I have stopped the salt treatment completely. I did a 30% water change two days ago and my regular 15% water change yesterday afternoon. As soon as I felt confident that most of the trophonts (sp?) from the Ich had been eliminated I stopped the salt treatment.

As far as what caused the outbreak... I keep trying to figure it out but can't. Ammonia and nitrite have been steady at 0 ppm since I noticed the Ich, so unless there was some sort of spike that went completely unnoticed I don't think it was anything in the water. Nitrate has been steady from about 15-25 ppm, with more right before a water change and less after. The last fish I added to the tank was the leopard cory, Izzie, who died after the Ich treatment. I've been thinking on this for awhile but I'm kind of stumped as to what could have caused the breakout in the first place. What really confuses me is that my 12 gallon tank is fine, and it's on the exact same water change and feeding schedule as my other tank, so I don't think the issue in my main tank could be anything related to overfeeding or not enough water changes. IDK... I wish I knew what the problem was...