my sucker fish has a serious desease emergency!!!!

Question
My sucker fish was doing seem to be doing fine untiltoday at 12:39 a.m. I saw him at the bottom of the fish tank the fish tank is  a 150 gallon tank the filter system there are 2 aqua clear 150's i have a sucker a lot of guppies and a loach.what he looks like is he has white spots all over him his alive but barley. please respond immediatly. thankyou so much. (tankhas been set up for about9 to 10 years.)

Answer
Hi Anthony;

I hope this has gotten to you in time. I check my messages once or twice a day and we actually have up to 4 days to answer each question so we aren't always able to answer emergencies right away. I'm really sorry about that. Hopefully he is still alive for treatment.....

If the spots look like salt specks he has a parasite called "ich". He is too sick to use regular medicines so the natural way to treat it is best. Regular parasite medicines don't work any better than the heat/salt cure anyway and the meds will burn the fishes' skin and gills, causing them further stress. You need to slowly raise the temperature up to 82 degrees by turning up the heater. Watch it over a period of hours to be sure it goes where you want it. Don't raise it with water changes or it may go up too fast and shock the fish. Also add aquarium salt or uniodized rock salt. You will need 3 cups of salt for a 150 gallon. This is equal to one teaspoon of salt per gallon. The aquarium salt sold at fish stores is expensive, so the uniodized rock salt you buy at the grocery store is fine. I've heard that kosher salt has no other additives either and is safe. Read the label to be sure it is pure salt. Granulated table salt has anti-caking agents and often has iodine. These are toxic to fish. Do not use it.

This parasite hates heat and salt. Your fish will increase their slime coating from the use of salt and this helps keep the parasite from reattaching once it bursts off the fish. Hundreds of tiny parasites explode from each spot as it matures. (Yuck!) You may see the spots get worse for a day or two, but this is only because they were too small to see until then. It isn't killed while still on the fish. The parasite has to develop enough to burst into the water before they can be killed. This means your other fish have already been exposed and it would not be helpful to move the sick fish out of the tank. It would only stress him more anyway.

It will help to add extra oxygen to the water too. If you don't have an air pump hooked to an airstone already, get one. Extra air is needed because the oxygen saturation is lower as the temperature goes up.

Hoping for the best.....

Followups welcome

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins

Come on over and join us on the freshwater fish forum at About.com to get even more information too;
http://freshaquarium.about.com/od/questionsanswers/a/naavigateforum.htm

My member name is ChrisR62. See You There!