Ich appears in my npt

[Juicebox]

i have a 14 gallon npt.temperature has been around 75 - 78. i had my male betta and 3 assasin snails, many pond snails,some mts also and 4 ghost shrimp and a mystery snail

last week i took out my male betta and my mystery snail and took all my plants out..

i replanted them all to make the plant look better and then i introduced 4 female bettas to the tank about 3 days ago..

so now in the tank i have 3 female bettas. 4 ghost shrimp, 3 assasin snails and the feeder snails. 1 female betta was agressive and is floating in a cup in the tank..

just now i checked my tank when feeding my females and all 3 of them are showing white spots on the fins,i think it just happened over night as they had nothing on them last night,the female that is floating in the cup is showing no signs of ich as of now..

as i just last week took every thing out of my tank,moved it all around,replanted and did a 70 percent water change id really not like to have to tear the whole tank down again,especially not on christmas eve/ christmas day..

how can i treat these 3 new females for ich?? without hurting my plants obviously.i really need some advice,im not sure if i should cup them before it spreads more and treat them in their cups and then return them to the tank after treatment,ive never had any fish diseases before

[Juicebox]

i feed omega one pellets and frozen bloodworms once a week,since i had the females in i fed bloodworms once and pellets the other 2 days, no ammonia,no nitrates,no nitrites, i had been doing 30 percent water changes every 3 days for the last 2 weeks on the tank ,then i did that big water change when i replanted

[Juicebox]

so after the last hour of furiously googling and reading everything i can find it seems that maybe a 3 stage approach might be best..

STEP 1
____________
raising my temperature 1 degrees every hour untill i am at 86 or 87 degrees and then leave it there for 10 days is recomended.not sure though if the stock in my tank would all be tolerant of the high temperatures so lookin for advice..

STEP 2
___________
i also am thinking of dosing 1 tablespoon of some non ionized sea salt that i have in my kitchen,not sure if such a low dose will hurt my shrimp and snails,ive read that low amount should be ok for plants

STEP 3
_____________

Dosing with some organic copper free and harsh chemical free ich medicine.there seems to be 3 or4 different brands and many people say they are waste of money and not strong enough to do anything to ich so i dont know..



whats peoples thoughts on this please??
hoping to start my treatment asap

[LebronTheBetta]

Most plants can't tolerate salt. I recommend Coppersafe, it's actually one of those brands that WILL work. Just look it up and see if it's plant safe. I think you should float your snails and shrimp for the treatment, though. You can't separate?

[Juicebox]

ive got maybe 40 pond snails. 30 malaysian trumpet snails,most of which are buried in the dirt and attached to plants,gonna be a nightmare to try dig them all out and go through all the plants trying to find them and pick them off, i also read that the ich can attach itself to snail shells and live there,so if i take them out and rid my tank of ich then put them back in this could reintroduce ich back into my tank potentially,if what i read is correct..


regarding coppersafe,i have googled it,it contains copper and will certainly kill any snails left in the tank,and it can also stay in the tank for months and will kill any snails or shrimp i reintroduce into the tank for months to come,thats what ive read in a few reviews of the product,id rather not put any chemicals into the tank that will kill my inverts

[LebronTheBetta]

That's a lot of snails.. Does Ich even affect snails? With no host to feed, they die. I honestly have no idea what to do then, besides separating them and leaving the tank bare besides the inverts.

[Oldfishlady]

I would be really careful before using any copper based medications....

If they only have a few spots and otherwise asymptomatic-you may not need to do anything other than reduce stress and some water changes.

If they have a lot of spots and/or symptomatic...I would move them to QT for treatment.-Making water changes on the display tank-however, since this is a planted tank-it will be hard to vacuum without disturbing the plant roots.

The way I like to treat Ich on Betta-is with the 2 cup method...I use 2 cups and swap them out daily along with 100% water changes to manually remove the parasites. I do this for at least 3 days Past the last day I could see any spots on them-this is to ensure none are hidden in the gills-Treatment can be 3-10 days in some cases...

Sometimes I use salt and sometimes I don't-If the Ich are not salt tolerant-it can help to a degree in killing them. The main reason I use salt is more for the wounds left by the Ich once they detach-due to possible secondary infection.

High temp can help speed the Ich life cycle to get it to detach faster from the fish to manually remove them and at 86F it is harder for the Ich to reproduce, however, too high of temp can be stressful on the fish and with stress-that can compromise the immune response making it harder for the fish to fight for itself.

[marktrc]

i recently added coppersafe to one of my tanks with plants in it. my mistake was i added double the dose right near my anacharis. the reason i added double the dose was because i left 15 gallons of untreated water in the tank. i wanted to add another 15 gallons to cover the plants on my driftwood. so i doubled the dose on the 15 gals of water i added for a total of 30 gals of treated water. the anacharis shedded all its leaves. the anubias, java fern seem unaffected. hornwort may have turned slightly brown in areas but the new growth is healthy. the only snails i had in there are ramshorn and about 25% of them are still alive. the ich seems to be cured after 10 days and i have begun doing water changes to remove the coppersafe. this is my one experiment with coppersafe. i plan to use it again if i need to.

[Juicebox]

thanks fir the replies guys

i bought a bottle of kordons 100 percent organic ich attack from petco 15 dollars..

i cranked my 50 watt aqueon heater up to the top it will go and it seems to be capped out at 82 degrees,it does say in instructions it will go to 88 but this seems false.only got the heater with my tank about 2months ago so its not old or worn out or damaged..

anyways i have had my tank 82 for 2 days and have dosed the tank twice a day with the ich treatment..



today following oldfishladys advice i have taken out my 3 bettas and cupped them in a cup with some salt and they are now floating in the tank, i did a 50 percent water change in my tank to try remove any parasites if any are present in the water..

ive noticed around the fishes gills there is a metalic alluminium foil colour on the fishes,im not sure if it was there before i cupped them in the salt water or if its a side effect of the salt but ill keep my eye on it

for the next 3 days ill do 100 percent water changes in the cups and add new salt each day and see how it goes,ill also keep adding the ich attack to the tank as directed,i might as well use it all up although it does make the water brown and smells terrible,ill update again in a couple days