why do my fish keep getting ick?

Question

no matter what i do my fish keep getting ick and dying. even after i put tablets in the water that are supposed to clear it up they still get sicker or it clears up and then in a couple weeks its back. what am i doing wrong?

i have the filter out rite now while i put the tablet in there for the ick. it turns the water blue so im assuming that it has copper in it. i dont know if i should wait to clean the tank until its cleared up or clean the tank completely and put fresh water in there with another tablet

Answer 1

It might be the medication. I have found that using Quick Cure works very well. You need to vacuum the gravel before starting the treatments. Remove the charcoal from the filter. Use the medication as stated on the bottle. But I continue to use the medication for 7 days after I have seen the last white spot. You need to cover the tank completely and leave the lights off. Vacuum the gravel every 3 days before you add the medication. This will remove alot of the ick. You can also turn up the heater to shorten the life span of Ick. This is the only way I cleared it up from my tank a few months ago.
Good Luck!

Answer 2

Usually ick comes in with new fish, that's why it's highly recommended to quarantine them for at least a week if you can

Another way of getting rid of ich, is the salt and temperature treatment


Turn up the heat to 88 degrees, that's the temp ich really dies
Take out a half full cup of tank water and dissovle 1 tablespoon of aquarium salt per gallon in there

That means if you have a 20 gallon tank, you put 20 tablespoons of salt in there, dissolve it and pour it slowly into your tank
You will have to do daily waterchanges of 25% with a gravelsiphon and repeat the salt treatment daily until you see no more spots

When you do the waterchange only put as much salt in there as you put new water in, that means you will take out 5 gallons of a 20 gallon tank, with that you only need to dissolve 5 tablespoons of salt


After about 3-4 days, the ich should be disappeared, turn the heat back down to normal, and do a 50% waterchange


And never use these chemicals for a cloudy tank, they do more harm then good



Hope that helps
Good luck


EB


feel free to email me

Answer 3

It really sounds as if your failing to carry on dosing the fish after the white spot disappears, as someone says theres 3 cycles to white spot and the last is on the fish and the only time its visible, Most failures are due to this other causes are not removing any carbon filtration and introducing fish during the quaranteen period.
Raise the temp to 86f then dose with the treatment for the required period then a couple of week after the period lower the temp back to its normal temp. I personally don't like using chemicals and generally find a high temp does the trick but I've been fortunate not to have serious outbreaks.

AJ

Answer 4

Ich has three cycles, only one of which is visible to your eye and where it is actually attached to the fish. The other cycles are when it is free-swimming, which is difficult to see, and when it is lying dormant in the substrate waiting to hatch. This three-cycle process can last for a month or more even when being treated. Furthermore, ich can only be killed in one of these stages, so if you don't allow the medication to remain in the tank for the duration of the infection and during the only stage in which it can be killed, it will continue to grow, multply, infect and kill fish. So, my bet is that you are discontinuing treatment too soon. Another possibility is that you are not removing your filtering media during treatment. Just as the filtering media removes toxins from the water, so does it remove the medication and this will also result in the fish never being properly treated. It's also possible that the treatment you are using isn't one of the better treatments, so you may wish to change to a different ich medication. Look for copper-based medications such as CopperSafe by Mardel, General Cure by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals and Aquari-Sol. Look for the active ingredient “copper sulfate” or “soluble copper salts.”

Answer 5

These poor guys... orandas are more than often forced to take medicine when nothing is wrong. This is not ick. Ick is when many white spots appear all over the body and seem to flake off. What you are seeing is signaling normal head growth.

Answer 6

You need to clean out the tank 2 times a week.

Answer 7

Ick can hang around and return. To treat it, you can speed up its death by heating the water a little. Keep salt treatment going for several weeks.

Answer 8

Fish get ick because they get really stressed out and then their immunes systems slows down and they are easily vulnerable to diseases as for now, Ick and fungus. Well, fungus is not really caused of stress.

Answer 9

when you add the medicine you need to take out the charcoal filter. another good tip is to keep water out overnight to let it age before you put it in .

Answer 10

You need to completely clean out the tank, empty it and start over. Make sure you are not leaving any cleaner residue in the tank. Boil the rocks and any other things you have sitting in the tank, this will be sure to kill any harmful bacteris or residue that may be on them.