Icky Ich!

Question
I Have a 20 gallon tank that has been up and running for about 2 years. I had it stocked with 4 bleeding hearts, a red tailed shark, 2 penguin tetras, and a tetra of some sort. I (stupidly) bought 2 small plecos from petsmart recently. shortly after introducing them to the tank I noticed that my bleeding hearts where covered in Ich. I had had this problem when I first set the tank up, and so I turned up the heat to 82 and added salt to my tank. I did all of this as soon as I saw the ich, about 2 days ago. I lost all my Bleeding hearts, and 1 of my penguins is having trouble leaving the top of the tank. Also my red tailed shark looks like he has been bleached in a few spots over his back. Is this Ich? and should I get a store bought ich cure or will the heat and aquarium salt do the trick? The worst part is the pleocs are happy as little clams in there, nothing on them at all, and all the rest of my fish are going belly up. Is there anything else I should do? thanks!  

Answer
Hi Taryn;

What a shame. I'm so sorry you lost so many. You could add an ich remedy to the situation. Quick Cure seems to be the best. Use a half-dose (10 drops) because you have sensitive fish in there still. Use it every day for at least a week. Ich often looks worse before it gets better too. When the parasite first embeds itself in the skin of the fish it takes a couple of days for it to show as a white spot. The medicine can't kill it until the white spots appear and bursts out thousands of new parasites. It is protected from the medicine while still embedded.

Extra aeration is helpful too. When the temperature is elevated the oxygen saturation reduces. If the ich attacks their gills it makes it even harder for the fish to breathe. Poor guys. Extra water movement helps keep the ich from attaching to the fishes' skin too.

The shark is probably just stressed but it wouldn't hurt to add a skin soothing product called MelaFix. It has natural ingredients to help tissues heal and also helps prevent secondary infection from the ich spots. It really can't cure disease and does nothing to the actual parasites but it's an excellent support product for healing.

Plecostomus are known for carrying ich. When we received shipments of them in the store I just started treating the tank the first day to avoid the whole mess. Especially in the winter. It just seemed inevitable that there would be an outbreak.

I hope they feel better soon......

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins