ich and plants

[osnapitseric]

So i have a current outbreak of ich in my tank. I'm doing the high temp (84 degrees) and 1tsp of salt/10 gallons with a 50% water change every 3 days. I'm concerned about my plants. How will they do in this high heat and salt? Some of the plants i have are HC, java moss, anubis, rotala macrandra, and some other stem plans.

Should i keep up what im doing or alter it? Suggestions welcomed.

 

[tedr108]

Well, the salt IS going to be bad for your plants. I think the 84° should be enough to wipe out the ich fairly quickly, even without salt additions. It worked for me without salt. I got some infected fish from the LFS. In a couple of days one or two of my cardinal tetras had ich also, so I went to 84° which wiped out all of the ich in one day.

Why do you think you got ich in the first place? Is there something unhealthy about your tank? Did you bring in some infected fish?

If the 84° does not wipe out your ich quickly, you probably have something else going on that makes your fish's immune systems a little down. In my more inexperienced days, I replaced evaporated water with tap water each day. My water hardness went up and up until my fish (mostly tetras) were easily infected with ich. Once I switched over to RO water for evaporation replacement and my hardness went down to reasonable levels (it was 30 to 40GH at one point!), my fish are pretty much immune to ich now.

 

[osnapitseric]

I believe that heat by itself does not get rid of ich as heat only speeds up the reproduction of ich. The only way to get rid of it is by removing or "salting" the ich while it's at it's free swimming stange. We can't kill ich that's on the fish and by using heat we can speed up the reproduction thus allowing the ich capsules to fall off the host (fish) and remove it or salting it during its free swimming stage.

I've gotten ich from a sick fish that was recently added to the tank.

I don't think it's the evaportation but i can be wrong, this tank has been up for about a month and all the fish were fine until the new addition.

 

[shane]

Well I have a discus tank that is in teh 82-84F range. Bought some rummy nose tetras that had ick. In a week, the ick was gone from the rummynose tetras. In general, I never have ick problems with the temp in the 82-84F range.

In terms of plants, the anubius, macandra, and java moss will do fine. I have them in my tank with no problems.

 

[osnapitseric]

this is interesting....i'll keep you guys updated on this siutation. When it comes to ich and planted tanks its very sensitive.

 

[aquabillpers]

When my fish have become infected with ich, raising the temperature to the high 80's or even higher for 3 or 4 days has always corrected the problem (although I have only 3 or 4 observations over about 10 years). I haven't seen any side effects.

I know that raising the temperature speeds up the ich organism's life cycle, so existing cysts drop off the fish faster, but I don't know why the new, juvenile organisms don't re-attach to the fish. Perhaps high temperatures cause the organisms to go into a resting mode and not reproduce? Then, by the time that they start reproducing again, the now stronger fish can withstand them?

Bill