treatment for cat fish

Question
QUESTION: hello,i have a 46 gallon tank with 2 jewel cichlids, 1 fire mouth cichlid, a Texas cichlid, two full grown silver dollars and a bullhead catfish. i recently noticed that my Texas cichlid had ich, the problem is that i am not sure how to treat the catfish          
PS i am not able to set up a quarantine tank

ANSWER: Hi Ben,
The other fish can be treated with the heat and salt treatment to kill the ich, however it does not work on the catfish because catfish along with inverts cannot handle salt.  If you do not have a quarantine tank then I suggest you use ONLY the heat treatment.  It has worked for other aquarists.  I generally advise you to use salt with the heat, because if the heat isnt high enough, then all you are doing is increasing the life cycle of the ich to breed more ich.  Temperatures at 86F will hinder ich reproduction and 87-90 will kill ich and salt will help further to kill.  Also thing you could do is treat them with Quick Cure.  However Quick Cure does contain salt, but I believe it is not enough salt to harm the catfish.  

The best suggestion I can give is to somehow isolate the catfish to another container.  Borrow a friends big bucket if you have to.  And then treat the main tank.  If you absolutly cannot do it, then you can do what is mentioned in the first paragraph.
-Matt-

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------


my fish tank   QUESTION:  my ich problem is gone but i have a question about predatory fish. i have a 9 inch bullhead catfish when i went on vacation left him a dozen rosy reds when i came back 3 days later he ate non of them but about 3 weeks later one of  my cichlids was getting picked on so i added a few dither fish ,3 giant danios, and he at them so my question is that is it common for predatory fish to only eat non feeder fish.Also before vacation my catfish eat 2 angel fish and a ram.

Answer
Hi Ben,
Catfish will eat anything live that will fit in its mouth.  Its more common for catfish to eat bright colored fish.  If you put your catfish in a tank with a feeder goldfish with other dull colored fish, you'll see that he will chase the goldfish around rather than the dull one.  I used to keep several catfish and in my experience there are more attracted to bright colors.  Catfish are known to eat smaller fish so him eating the angels and the ram is not uncommon.
-Matt-