Treating Ich in a planted community tank?

Hi Guys

I know we had a thread the other day about Ich (read it) and upping the temperature to 31 degrees but I was wondering how you treat Ich in a planted community tank? The tank has guppies, cardinals, gouramis, harlequins and cory's. I noticed a few "silvery dots" on my Cardinals this morning. What is my best option?

I started testing my tank last night with my new test kit but I only managed to test:
Temp - 27 degrees
PH - 7
KH - 3
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 10
General Hardness - 7

 

@MarcHawke Bio -Elite anti ich does not affect plants.

 

@DewaldC - Have you used it?
Has anybody used "Bio-Elite"? Any success?

 

@MarcHawke Yes, it contains plant extracts.

 

@DewaldC - How long was the treatment for. Did you increase the tank temp? What are the inmates of the tank in question? Sorry for all the questions but I don't want to kill anything in my tank.

 

@MarcHawke Treatment is 10 - 14 days.
Temp = 30 (some plants do not like high temp)
inmates= neon tetras x4,cherry barbs x2 ,cory cats x2 ,german blue ramx1,threadfin rainbows x1 .
(does not affect invertebrates)

 

@DewaldC - Thanks very much. Will go to LFS today to source.

 

I have treated ich (only once) in a planted community tank using the simple heat method. The plants were not affected, and I've never had a re-occurrence. Fishes were gouramis, swordies, ancistrus, brochis, celestial pearl danios that I recall.

 

@tracyp - I would rather not use meds. Dilema dilema. I would have upped the temp and added salt but I'm worried about the cory's.

 

Why are they getting ich ? Doing water changes with cold water ? Water params all ok ?
With fw ich should not be a huge issue, i have never treated ich with meds and i have never lost a fish to ich. I dont get why people want to treat ich with metro etc etc.... If water conditions are good and no big fluctuations they will get over it.

 

@Singularity - I posted the water parameters I have tested. Anything look strange? I believe the KH should be higher? I last did a water change on the weekend. All my water is treated with Nutrafin Cycle, Nutrafin Aquasafe and I dose directly into the tank with Tetra Nitrate Minus. I've never had this problem before and I'm not sure what has caused it.

 

@MarcHawke. Do you heat the water prior to adding it to the tank? I had Itch in my tank two weeks back. Upped the temp and added meds. Everything fine again. I was struggling to get the 5 foot on temp. So water was at 20deg for a few days. Then the Itch started. So mine was triggered by cold water.

 

@Marchawk I take a handful of 2 hand full of salt (over 30 spoons) in my guess and dumpped it in 360L of water, no ill effects for the Cory,Clown loach and a black ghost knife.
Tho they will move away from the area where the salt lands.
1 & half hand full in the open area (next to plants also)half in sump area.

but also, I use Seachems Paragaurd together I do push the temp up from 25 to 28-29 (can go higher) but thats cause I used the salt and meds

 

@Markhawke! (with the E!)

 

ok screw this, I cant spell today..

 

@SloMo.00. - I check the temp day and night and I haven't noticed any fluctuations. I generally get the temp right (or slightly higher) from the tap and then monitor with a thermometer until it's correct before adding to the tank. I airate the bucket of water with an airstone.

 

Yeah I think in my case the low temp was the culprit. Could be that the fish was a bit stressed aswell. Stress normally also triggers disease in fish. Up the Temp and see if it helps. Like I say I used meds and in two days it was gone.

 

@BBQ - Thanks for the multiple responses :laugh:. If I use ParaGuard should I remove the Boyu Bio Ceramic from my filter. The box states that it has Activated Carbon.

Further info - I don't know if this has anything to do with anything but I added Seachem Clarity to my tank last night?

 

@MarcHawke - correct temperature for treating ich is 32 deg. the parasite cannot survive at this temperature, temps lower than that jsut speeds up the parasite cycle, allowing it to reproduce faster. it needs to be at 32 deg for 10-14 days to completely eradicate the life cycle of the parasite, for such a short period your fish should be ok at that temperature. no salt should be required, but if you do decide to add salt, check if the fish you have can handle the additional salt.


all of the best dude..

 

All Carbon should be removed when dosing Meds. As for the Clarity. Don't think this would have had an effect. As long as you use as specified.