Recent ICH problem. not seen on my knife yet.

[LikeItLow]

ok so i bought some fish and put them into my 65gal with my knife fish. its been a week and am starting to see fin rot/ich on one of the fish i just added, and its on a few other older fish. i know my BGK has eaten some of the smaller fish so im going to asume he has ich or will have it in the very near future.

my buddy gave me melafix to try. ive done a bit of research and it says not to use it with scaleless fish. others say its ok. im going to keep researching but if someone has a defenite answer or another option that i can use on scaleless fish ide like to know asap so i can get rid of this crap lol.

thanks in advanced!
Kyle.

[Momobobo]

Melafix to treat Ich? To my understanding Melafix will only help the healing process of the fin rot. Just dose a teaspoon of aquarium salt for every 5-10 gallons of water and increase the temperature is IMHO the safest option.

[LikeItLow]

lol yeah i questioned that too but he said it worked for his ich problem.

so you think salt will be ok for the knife fish in the level you posted?

[Momobobo]

I never heard of Melafix being used to treat Ich before ...infact, I find alot of medication lowers immune response, if you just dose incorrect medicines it tends to have detrimental effects on the fish.

If you dose a teaspoon every 10 gallons it should be safe.

[AWW]

I am not a big fan of chemicals, not that melafix does much anyways, its 99% water....

I recommend you up temp. to 82, add salt, and do a 30% waterchange daily untill improvement. Ich can not reproduce above 8 degrees, and the water changes will help relieve the fish in the mean time. This might take up to two weeks to work, as ich detaches after about that long.

When doing that many water changes, be sure to de-chlorinate!

Hopefully everything works out! I have used this system with great results in the past. Although I caught the Ich early in it's cycle, It should still help.

Also, take one disease at a time. If the fin rot is not healed by the time the ich is gone, then add the melafix, not before! You will be poring all those meds down the drain (also remove carbon)

[bingerz]

you could definitely save alot of $$$ with the diy melafix.
Homemade Melafix

[josephl]

Kordon also makes an organic cure that is effective and can be used at full strength with scaleless fish. I know I have used it in my tank with loaches and my knife fish with no problems whatsoever and it clears the problem up everytime

[LikeItLow]

thanks for the responses so fast everyone!
AWW- your way seems to be the one im going with, just not sure i can do 30% waterchanges daily. and when do i add salt? after each water change? and 6 teaspoons of salt every water change?

[LikeItLow]

ok so i scratched the salt idea. i went to my LFS and he told me to just use a real ich medication lol. so i grabbed API's Super ICK Cure. i used it at half dosage hopefully the knife survives lol.

[thefishwife]

Hope it works for you, when I had ich, b/c I wanted something more organical, I went with Kordon's Ich Attack, it worked very well for me and in that tank, I had shrimp, cory's loaches, pleco's and fish.