I am cycling my new 29 gallon...I have lots of fish from my previous tank...can I treat 4 Ick?

Question

Can I treat for Ick while cycling? Will that make things worse? What should I do?

Answer 1

it's not great to have to do both at one time, but if you don't treat them for the ich they'll all die anyways. I'd go ahead and treat them and just keep an eye an the levels in the tank and make sure none get to high. Make sure to remove all carbon from the filters or else it will just remove the medication as you put it in. I would also not feed them as much to try to keep down on the waste being produced in the tank. Also make sure to raise the temp in the tank slowly to 82 (as long as your fish can handle it) to make treating the ich a quicker process.

Answer 2

The medication for ich generally won't harm the tank bacteria, but the stress from having medication in the tank, dealing with ammonia, nitrite, and the parasite won't be good for your fish.

Do you still have the old tank running? If so, you might be able to treat them in that. It might have been better to let the fish stay in the old tank until the new one was cycled.

Since the parasite can kill the fish, you don't have any choice but to treat them. The old tank if still running would be your best option, but if that's not available, you'll either need to treat them in the new tank, or a bare (hospital) tank.

You can either use medication (products with the combination of malachite green and formalin are the most effective of the medications, although you should use these with caution - the ingredients are carcinogens), but you can also treat with salt at a teaspoon per gallon of water. The salt will also help with higher nitrites in the tank while it's cycling. Turning the temperature up on the tank will also help (with both). At higher temperatures, the parasites have more difficulty reproducing, but the bacteria that cycle the tank reproduce faster. If your fish can tolerate the higher temperatures, you can turn it up to 86-88o (do this slowly, a few degrees every hour).

Since you didn't mention what fish you keep, just use aution when using medications or salt with tetras, catfish, or scaleless fish. These tend to be less tolerant of treatments. The majority can handle a full dose, but not if it's added all at one time. Start with just 1/4-1/2 and add the rest gradually (same as the temperature change).

Remember to remove the carbon from your filter if you use medication (it's not necessary to remove it if you use salt only) and keep up good filtration (to keep the water oxygenated, especially if you increase the temperature). Ich takes about 10-14 days to kill, and continue the treatment for at least 3-5 days after you no longer see spots on the fish. Only one stage of the parasite is on the fish, and this is the stage that's not affected by the treatments. So you need to leave the treatment in the water so the parasites can be killed after they drop off your fish. If you stop treating too soon, your fish may be reinfected by parasites still alive in the water.

Also, remember to lower your temperature gradually and do partial water changes so you don't shock your fish returning them to their "normal" conditions.

Because the tank is cycling, you may need to do water changes during the treatment. That's okay, and if you use a gravel vacuum, you'll actually help by removing parasites from the gravel. Just remember to add back only the amount of medication that was removed by the water change, not a full dose for the entire tank.