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Back from my GREAT weekend in San Diego with my marine biology class, come to ask about my tanks. My mom was under very -very- strict orders not to feed anyone on Friday or Saturday. Turn the lights on and off, check the filters, everything else is fine.

So of course I come home to see my fry tank littered with flake. In good news, the 20 gallon long seems to have had no problems, and the 10 gallon was just low on water.

The 20 gallon though........ech. Or ich, rather. It seems my 7 cardinals ALL have ich quite badly. I think the sparkling gouramis might have brought it in this live form when I bought them a week or so ago.

Here's the problems.

1. This tank is very planted. So that nixes most meds. Also, is sand substrate.
2. I have a pleco, a banjo cat, and some cories in this tank. Also not so good with meds.
3. Why just the cardinals? What brought this on?

4. My idea to solve. Please help with opinions as well!
---Since I do not want to kill my bioload, I plan to increase the water changes to 50% a day, up the temp to 82*F. Keep this up for a week, and I should be good.....right?

Sounds like a perfectly safe and effective solution to me. You should definitely be careful with the meds, but small doses of ick treatment should not be avoided.

Good luck.

Tim

Hi Taratron,

I'm no expert, but one reason that it is only your cardinals with ich and not any thing else could be that the cardinals are more sensitive than the others. This would mean that they are more susceptible to getting things like ich. I would think that raising the temp should clear it up.

Cheers, CatBrat.

Lucky I read this post...I am battling ich also on my cardinals and WINNING!

I had ich before on fish, but it never spread. I just kept the lights off most of the time, made my normal water changes, and added aquarium salt and Stress Coat in the tank during the changes. This tank (55 gallon) had angelfish, clown loaches, Harlequin rasboras, African Butterfly, and a few guppies. This did very well and the ich nerver spread and was gone within a few days.

The saw some ich on a cardinal on my 37 gallon tank (contains Gold Nugget Pl*co, L-333 Pl*co, Cardinal Tetras, & Dwarf Gourami). I figured what worked for my 55 gallon tank should work on this tank so I did the same thing. As the days went on, the ich started to spread to the other cardinals and some to my L-333 pl*co. So I started looking at an alternative. I did some research and basically said to raise the temp, up to 85 and add aquarium salt. Also to perform a 50% water change. I performed a 50% water change, added Stress Coat, and raised the temp from 80-81 F. About an hour later, I add the aquarium salt. Every other day, I do the same thing. The highest temp I had it was at 83 F (too scared to rais it to 85). I have been doing this for about a week now and the ich is slowly decreasing. Only 1 or 2 spots on 2 cardinals.

The thing that puzzled me is the reason why it never spread before on my 55 gallon tank. The only difference was that at the time, my 55 gallon tank was using an Emperor 400 filter and also a UGF with powerheads. My 37 gallon now is has no UGF, but the same filter. I was thinking one of the stages of the ich is that it falls off from the body of the fish and lands on the substrate, which then hatches and becomes free swimming. Maybe the UGF with the powerheads had enough force from letting the ich from becomming free swimming and just kept it in the substrate.

Anyway, one thing to keep in mind is, if you plan to use aquarium salt, don't apply it directly into the tank. What I did is I cut some slits in a plastic cup, then I put the salt in the cup. I tied some string to the cup so I can hang it. I then slowly lowered the cup into the tank and hung it, so it stays just below the water line. The salt will slowly dilute. You can move the cup into different areas so does not concentrate only in one area.

Using the salt hasn't effected my Cardinal Tetras nor my pl*cos. The salt also helps killls parasites and helps promote the slime coating on the fish.

I would also like to add that you should keep the lights off most of the time and just leave them on for feeding. I read one article that you should totally blacken your tank (cover with blanket letting NO LIGHT in). I didn't do that, but just turned them off most of the time. Doing that and the above, I now have NO ich