Ick

[atteb]

Hello all, I just bought two beautiful super deltas and they have come down with ick.

A brief history: I bought them from a store not in my hometown as they don't carry them here at all. The store they came from had very dirty water for all their bettas in tiny jars. So they were kept at room temp which is chilly there.

I then had them bag them with clean water (this might have been the mistake) and then they had to spend one night in the hotel room till we left for home the next day.

When I got home I acclimitized them as they were going into a heated 75 degree filtered tank. I have just the two of them in this tank which is divided and about 2 days ago I see they have spots all over.

What I have done so far is to raise their tank temp to 80 and I added 1 tsp of salt dissolved into the tank. Today they have about 50% less spots, more active so keeping fingers crossed. They are eating very well too.

Just to let you know I did not put any of the water from the bag they travelled home in into my tank.

So what do you all treat ick with for bettas??

I am going to leave them alone right now with what I did and do another water change in 2 days but if it does not clear them up would something like Aquarisol be alright for bettas??

[1fish2fish]

Well first off.. try to keep your tank at 80 normally. 75 is too cold for bettas to really be happy.

Right now what you want to do is bump up the temperature to about 86*F.. do this slowly over the next few days so they don't shock. Leave the light off the tank.

Do daily water changes for 2 weeks. Keep the tank salted. You should not see any more spots after 7 days but keep doing daily water changes and salt for the full 14 so the ich is fully killed.


I've had great success with this without having to use medication.

[atteb]

Okay thanks for that info have a few more questions.

Is the 1 tsp of salt in this 3 gal the right amount?

When I do the water changes, do I add more salt? I know that salt does not evaporte so I don't want to over do the salt. I also don't want to do a complete water change as it will knock my system off balance being filterated.

After the reqired time, do I just slowly bring the temp back down to the 80 degrees?

[1fish2fish]

I would do 1 tsp per gallon so 3 tsp.

When you do water changes you'll need to add the salt back. So say you do a 50% water change you'll need to add back 1.5tsp of salt because you would have taken half the salt away. You don't have to do 100% changes, 25-50% will be fine. The purpose of the changes is to try to remove as much of the parasite as possible.


After the ich is gone just slowly bring the temp back down over a few days and you should be good :)

[atteb]

Thank You....