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Severe Ich Infestation In Planted Tank With Clear Silicone Joints And Inverts

Bumblefish

Bumblefish

Seedling
Joined
30 Jan 2018
Messages
10
Location
Cyprus
Hi guys.
New to forums etc. Live a bit off the grid!
Tank started 4 months ago. Cardinals, rummynose, saes, ottos, amanos, rcs and some ramshorn snails. All was going well. Plants had settled in nicely and then I saw a golden nugget plec (my favourite) for the first time in 15 years at a lfs in a neighbouring town. Fell for the bait. BANG!
Suffered a major whitespot outbreak.
Very resilient strain.
Took me 6 weeks to clear it up.
Didn't want to dye my silicone blue or kill my inverts. So no dye based meds on the agenda.
All is well now. About 10 days since all clear! Heres my journey, in brief...
Started treatment with dissolved metronidazole powder 5 mg/litre for 2 weeks directly to the water column plus food soak for 10 days. This has always worked for me in the past. Rummy nose and ottos clear. Unfortunately, no effect on cardinals. Getting worse in fact. Daily losses. Increased temp to 27.5 deg C and increased aeration massively. Increased metro dose to 10mg/l and dosed 2 times a day instead of 1. Started seeing progress on the cardinals after about 10 days but read that I shouldnt continue metro for more than 3 weeks for fear of renal damage to fish. By now, the impossible to source urgently, sera protazol had arrived in the post. 3 days carbon filtration just to be safe, 50%wc and then protazol at recommended dose. 90% waterchange next day. Minor effect on whitespot. 4 days later protazol again. 90% wc. Mininal effect again. Lots of snails kicked the bucket. Flame moss hit quite hard. By now kordon ich attack arrived plus seachem focus and metroplex. Started Metroplex/focus medicated food plus ich attack plus added a UV steriliser to the system. Immediate results. Progress apparent every day. All gone in about 10 days. Kept dosing ich attack another 5 days to be safe. Throughout ich attack treatment no water change but added ferts and supplements about 1 week into treatment. Casualties...approx 20 cardinals, 2 rummynose (+1 sae and some rcs which abandoned ship). Plants are a bit tatty (lots of holes in lower leaves) plus many snail deaths during protazol treatment although sera claim that it is well tolerated by snails (not all snails died though). Things are now back to normal. Flame moss has recovered. Phew!

In hindsight what should I have done differently? Ferts during treatment? Any supplements to definitely not add during treatment? Could I have pushed my temp higher with these species? Any plants that wouldn't tolerate higher temps? Many questions I guess...
Appreciate your feedback.
Happy scaping!
 
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Bumblefish said:
In hindsight what should I have done differently? Ferts during treatment? Any supplements to definitely not add during treatment? Could I have pushed my temp higher with these species?
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You probably have done all you could.

Bumblefish said:
Increased temp to 27.5 deg C
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Yes, higher than that is needed to kill ich, all the way up to 30-31C is needed unfortunately. If you provide increased surface agitation the fish should be fine. They're tropicals and high temps for short periods happen in nature. It's the lowered oxygen content that is the danger when you raise temps, not the temperature itself.
 
Thanks for the feedback. Are there any plant species that would not tolerate such high temperatures, albeit temporarily? Would the rcs also tolerate it?
 
Absolutely. I've kept quarantine tanks in the past and stopped because of lack of space. The temporary quarantine tank option interests me. I know some people move media back and forth from their display between treatments. Something feels terribly risky about placing medication-contaminated media back into the main display after treatment. Is there no danger of invert-unfriendly meds leaching into the display?
The only way i can imagine quarantining using a temporary tank would be to set it up using mature/established media from the display and then throwing it out when treatment is over. Is there a way to safely flush unfriendly chemicals e.g. copper from filter media?
 
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Yes, so keep some spare media and move it over if you don't want a full time one. Even just a spare sponge filter sponge sat in the back of the tank would grow some bacteria. If your tank is already fairly well stocked you know that you aren't going to be putting a lot of bioload in the quarantine anyway. I would say if you actually have to treat a major issue or lose all the fish in quarantine you could replace the media, it's not usually that expensive. If quarantine goes without a hitch then I'd move it back, after all you are moving the fish(s) itself too. I think it depends on the disease too, If it was something virulent and unidentified I'd be much more likely to chuck everything and start from scratch.

You can use polyfilter to remove copper - it sucks up all sorts of stuff so handy to keep around and use between/post medication: http://www.poly-bio-marine.com/faq.htm
 
Cheers Tam! Thanks for the advice.
Btw will polyfilter absorb any beneficial chemicals eg vitamins, ferts etc?
 
Bumblefish said:
Btw will polyfilter absorb any beneficial chemicals eg vitamins, ferts etc?
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Not sure to be honest. I've seen people lean both ways. I would say yes it might - it removes some nitrate, ammonia, phosphates which you might want for your plants. Plus tannins which again some people like to have. I don't know whether it would remove everything at a rate that would actually effect plants though.

I don't keep it in my planted tank all the time, but add it after medication (make sure it's not in there whilst you medicate) or if something seems off, I think some of my tanks with plants have it in the canister though - depends if there was a spare last filter clean.
 
Sponge filters or even DIY filters are cheap enough to replace when Quarantine is over. You either put one inside an established tank a couple of weeks before getting new fish, or keep one running all the time if you want to have one available for emergencies.

Another option if you use HOB or external filters is to take some media (or taking a filter pad i.e.) from an established filter to the quarantine one.

You don't even need a tank to setup a quarantine. You can use something as simple as a bucket, or spend about £5 in a big plastic box.
 
Thanks for the advice guys. I like the sponge filter idea but i need to find a fairly unobtrusive one that i can hide in the back of the display. Certainly not one of those grapefruit-sized monstrosities that they have around here hehe.

Please can we get back to a previous question. Are there any plant species that would not tolerate temperatures of 30 to 31°C, even temporarily in order to treat ich? Do amano and rcs also tolerate it?
 
Bumblefish said:
Please can we get back to a previous question. Are there any plant species that would not tolerate temperatures of 30 to 31°C, even temporarily in order to treat ich? Do amano and rcs also tolerate it?
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Not sure about the plants. I have my tanks in a conservatory that gets some sunlight in the afternoon, my Fluval Chi tank gets from 25 to to 30-31ºC almost everyday during the summer, the plants, fish and RCS were fine.
 
Have a look at articles on discus tanks and plants - they are kept at higher temps so anything that doesn't do well with them isn't going to like being cooked.
 
Good idea to check the discus threads although a brief spell in a warm bath is probably tolerated by a lot more species.
Ill check tonight if something already exists and, if it does, ill post a link here and, if it doesn't, maybe ill start a specific thread...
Cheers again for all the ideas!
kadoxu said:
Not sure about the plants. I have my tanks in a conservatory that gets some sunlight in the afternoon, my Fluval Chi tank gets from 25 to to 30-31ºC almost everyday during the summer, the plants, fish and RCS were fine.
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Do you mean that you can have 6 degree fluctuations in 1 day without ill effects?
 
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