How To Get Rid of Ich/Ick - White Spot Fish Disease

 Photo of white spot  from FishChannel.com

I am making this blog to inform many beginner aquarists about basic things their pet store may not tell them. I would first like to say that i am not an expert but all of my information has come from experience or extensive research from legitimate sources.

Fish ich or ick (white spot disease) is one of the most common diseases in the fish keeping hobby. Almost every fish keeper has seen ich happen. If not it is bound to happen one day. Ich is a parasite that is present in your aquarium and fish already. It is the stress that "brings it out". Ick looks like little white spots on the fish like grains of salt. It causes the fish to be itchy and scratch their fins against the substrate and other aquarium decorations. Ich has a life cycle of 7 days and is heat sensitive. With the right equipment and knowledge healing your fish should be fairly simple.

I recently had a breakout in my freshwater tank and my Tiger Oscar, Albino Oscar, Blood Parrot, Common Pleco, and Kissing Gourami contracted the parasite. My Firemouth Cichlid on the other hand got lucky and stayed healthy. I immediately raised the temperature in my tank to 82 degrees. Raising the temperature is a very important step because it helps kill the parasite. I then removed the carbon from my filter. If you have a canister filter then all you have to do is remove the carbon from the tray and leave the other media in the filter. If you have a hang on the back filter you can remove the filter cartridge and put a sponge there instead. If you do that make sure the sponge has never been used before to prevent spread of even more diseases. If you do not want to do that you can remove the cartridge and add a lot of air bubbles. The purpose of this is to keep the water moving so it wont rot. The reason we remove carbon is because carbon removes medication from the water.

Stained Silicone

Fish Ich Treatment
At this time you can add medication to your water. I personally recommend RID ICH it is for freshwater and saltwater fish and it gets the job done. All you need to do is follow the directions on the bottle, which is 1 teaspoon per 10 gal. I put in my dosage every 24 hrs it has been 6 days and the fish are almost completely healed. There is one downside to the medication. It may stain the silicone in the corners of the tank and other decorations. It may also be harmful to live rock.