Monotrete Abei With Ich Help!

[khoa.tran]

Hi,

It seems that my Abei has contracted ich. He has small white spots on his fins. currently im treating him with aquarium salt and raised the temp to about 82F. ammonia is 0 nitrite is 0 nitrate is 10 or below. im keeping the water aerated with a air stone and i pointed my filter return towards the water to create more agitation. i'm wondering how high of a temp can an Abei tolerate.. i read it was 80F and its currently at 82F. and ive read other people say for puffers treating ich should be at 84F and other sites saying that 86F would kill the ich.. what im hoping for is raising the temp to 84F if possible and the salt should kill the ich with the osmotic pressure it creates.. do you guys know the temp tolerance of an Abei.. or any suggestions on what to do? I dont wanna use the chemicals to treat the puffer as some of them can harm scaleless fish, kill my beneficial bacteria, or stain my tank etc.... thanks and i hope someone can help

[Myaj]

You are doing everything just right, good job.

As far as how high you can take the temperature, each fish is different. Watch for yours to start gasping for air, breathing heavier/faster, drastic color changes, that sort of thing. With the airstone added and the extra surface agitation, I would think you could take it a little higher, but you'll have to watch the puffer to see how it does.

I don't think raising the temp will kill any ich by "osmotic pressure", what raising the temperature does is speed up the life cycle of the parasite (egg->larvae->adult->egg). Since the parasite can only be killed at one point in the life cycle, you want to get all of the existing eggs to hatch fully out and get to that point so they can be killed by the salt, and heating up the water brings them to that point faster.

So you'll still want to treat for several weeks.. any eggs that don't hatch before you stop treatement will just reinfect the fish otherwise.

Hope that helps, if you need more info, there's an article in our library about treating freshwater ich, but its the same basic steps you've outlined above.

[khoa.tran]

I don't think raising the temp will kill any ich by "osmotic pressure", what raising the temperature does is speed up the life cycle of the parasite (egg->larvae->adult->egg).

Yea, I read up on that the heat will cause the parasites life cycle to speed up, what i meant to say was that adding salt will increase the osmotic pressure "from what i've read" and this will kill the parasite because they can't adapt to the new osmotic pressure as fish can. I've raised my temp slowly to 84F now... hope the fish are doing ok.. I didn't find the article on ich in the puffer library but I read an article about it at http://www.dwarfpuffer.com and it says to raise the temp to 86F but im hesistant to do that because the profile of the dwarfs indicates that it can tolerate higher temperatures than the Abei. Do you think that raising it by 2 more degrees F will kill my puffer? thanks

Ok now i've read the article from puffer library it is almost identical to the other one i read. it still states that temp should be at 86F but im scared that my Abei won't be able to tolerate it.. at 84F he seems to be swimming up and down alot... could be i'm paranoid now because he usually does this.. any idea if an Abei can tolerate 86F for a week or two?

[Myaj]

There's no way to tell you. Just use your best judgement.

Remember, you don't HAVE to raise the temperature, it just speeds up the life cycle and hurries the process along. I have my doubts about the osmotic pressure theory, but I"ve been wrong before. I do know that salt, time and heat are a proven method though and I'd trust that.

[khoa.tran]

So I put the temp at 86F and added some salt to the tank i hope everything should be fine in a few weeks. How long would i have to wait it out like this? I'm worried that prolonged high temperatures might stress out and kill my Abei.

[Dadof4]

The theory of raising the SG is to raise the osmotic pull of the outside fluid. Each cell has a sodium and potassium balance within the plasma membrane and that is usually a little higher than surounding fluid.

Very down and dirty description of how it works, with out going in to cellular biology:
Water has an afinity to move from a lower concentration to a higher concentration of sodium (or other matter). So, if you have a cell with fluid in it that is 45% sodium and if you raise the surrounding solution to a solution that is 75% soduim, the fluid from the cell is going to be drawn out in to the higher concentration to even the concentraton out, basially making the cell collapse and killing it.

[khoa.tran]

Hey, thanks for explaining this to me, is there a way to test how much salt i have in this tank already? and how long would it take for this to effectively kill the parasite.at 86F als is it really true that a temp of 86F will also kill the parasite or does the temp need to be like 88F? thanks alot

[khoa.tran]

Hi, do you guys know if i could use aquarisol to treat my tank? I've been reading and people seem to have success with treating Ich with aquarisol however it says that its harmful to scaleless fish which is the puffer. but if I use it could i just half the dose? or would it kill my puffer?

[LilGreenPuffer]

I would avoid meds if you can help it. Just keep going with what you're doing now.