help me with my goldfish Clemetine!

Question
So I don't have great luck with fish, I recently purchased a 10 gallon tank to avoid overcrowding which was a problem in the past. I did everything right from letting the water adjust to room temp to doing a 25-50% water change weekly. This is week 4 and my little gold fancy has Ick. I put her in a separate bowl and started treating, and she's doing great. The problem is, now my other grey fancy (Joel) is dying. I saw some slight spotting and put him in another bowl for treatment but he didn't respond well. I think I have lost him, since I put him back in the main 10 gal lastnight. However, Clementine is still doing ok, but now I am afraid to put her back in the big tank. I don't want to remove Joel yet since he isn't quite dead, but I'm not sure what to do. I don't want to overtreat Clemetine for the Ick either - what can I do about keeping my tank healthy and knowing that I'm not hurting my fish? Help!

Answer
Hiya!

Ok to start off, your fish don't get ICK, your tank does, so while you took Clementine out to treat her, you didn't treat the tank which is what you needed to do.

The best way to treat ICK is to speed up it's life cycle and the best way to do this is to raise the temperature of the water in the tank and add some aquarium salt (take your fish out before you do this cause they are goldfish and may not react well to the increase in temperature especially as they are fancys) (the ratio is 1tsp for every 5 gallons). The heat speeds up the development of the ICK and makes it easier to kill. Once you have done this, try putting both goldfish back in the tank (once you have removed the heater that is) and see how they go.

And just a word of advice, goldfish do not and should not be kept in a bowl. They need ample swimming space and filtered water (eg water with a filter in it) and obviously bowls provide neither of these.

Hope this helps, if you need help with anything else just drop me a line!

Cheers! Rach