Ick

[BlackberryBetta]

Hey guys! I have had an orange betta for about 5 months now but I think I have confirmed that he has ick. He is lethargic and looks like he was sprinkled with salt. He lives in a 10 gallon community with 5 tetras. 50% water changes every week. I noticed symptoms this morning and didn't have time to start treatment so I just raised the water temp a bit. However a am a little confused with the treatment....what should I do? How should I start and continue with it?

[Atena]

I treated my betta with aquarium salt and ich medication. The medication turned all the silicone parts blue, so if you have something valuable I would remove it from the tank.

My tank was much smaller so I am not sure if it would be safe to treat in a 10 gallon, but you can also do a hospital tank.

Ich is a parasite so you will need to treat the entire tank regardless, disinfect everything and dry out all toys and decorations for a few days.

I kept guppy at 86F, but don't raise the temperature too fast, only 2 degrees a day as more might shock him.

I cannot say for the other fish as I only have experience with the betta. I am sure there are more experienced people on here who can provide more info, but I hope this helps.

[BlackberryBetta]

Alrighty thanks for the reply. I started treating the whole tank with Jungle's Ick guard. Hopefully it will work. I am using half dose because the bottle said use half on small fish and I don't want to risk anything with the tetras. I just got some new ones about 2 weeks ago, I don't know if they could have brought the sickness in? I Dunno, I will just focus on string Reese and his buddies feeling good again!

[Atena]

You should always quarantine new life for two weeks before bringing it.to your tank. I learned this the hard way when I brought ick in on new.live plants. :(

[sunlight]

Atena i would recommend the same :)


You just need to be sure that you get rid all of them, because it can hide in the gills...or sometimes it can come back.

I would take everything out of the tank and disinfect, put it outside to completely dry out everything. When you dry them out the parasites will die. Then you know for sure it safe and don't hide anywhere.



Do you have live plants? If you do you need to quarantine them.


So i would recommend to buy aquarium salt in case you need to use it , only for your betta though. I can give you full instruction how to treat ich with salt. Not all fish salt tolerant so I don’t know about your other fish.

Not sure what is medications instructions but if you can't do 100% water change vacuum gravel daily to get rid of the ones that are fall from fish.

I would really do 100% water changes daily though. You can lower the water if you can't quarantine them . And just add recommended amount medications every time when you change the water.

Raising the water temp will speed the life cycle of the Ich and it will help make the ich fall off the fish faster so you can manually remove the ich from the tank/container. Temp over 86* and the ich is said to stop reproducing and some even say it will kill the ich