Is it possible to develop ich in a BW tank?

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Since this board has been up, we have found there are several questions that routinely get asked in order to help diagnose problems. If you can have that information to begin with in your post, we'll be able to help right away (if we can!) without having to wait for you to post the info we need.

1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.

2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.

3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)

4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.

5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.

We want to help, and providing this information will go a LONG way to getting a diagnosis and hopeful cure that much faster.

While you wait for assistance:
One of the easiest and best ways to help your fish feel better is clean water! If you are already on a regular water change schedule (50% weekly is recommended) a good step to making your fish more comfortable while waiting for diagnosis/suggestions is to do a large water change immediately. Feel free to repeat daily or as often as you can, clean water is always a good thing! Use of Amquel or Prime as a dechlor may help with any ammonia or nitrite issues, and is highly recommended.

Note - if you do not normally do large water changes, doing a sudden, large water change could shock your fish by suddenly changing their established water chemistry. Clean water is still your first goal, so in this case, do several smaller (10%) water changes over the next day or two before starting any large ones.
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Jayhawk
Green Spotted Puffer
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Is it possible to develop ich in a BW tank?

Post by Jayhawk »

OK, to dispense with the usual: 29 gallon BW tank at 1.005, up and running for over a year, 3 fish (figure 8, mollie, knight goby), ammonia 0, nitirite 0, nitrates 7.5 (5 on the FW test, 10 on the SW test), temp is 77.

The puffer has been in the tank over a year, the mollie was added about 4 months ago, and the knight goby was added a little over a month ago. The puffer and the mollie are fine.

The knight goby, though, has what almost appears to be three ich spots on his fins. Granted, maybe they've been there the entire time and I hadn't noticed them (he does hide a lot and runs when he sees me) but I'm not sure they were there before.

So, is it possible to develop ich at a SG of 1.005? The goby is low fish on the totem pole, so stress could be a factor...but this is my first BW tank so I don't know if it's even possible to develop ich if he didn't come in with it (he was in quarintine for 2 weeks and I honestly can't recall any spots back then.

If ich is a possibility, should I crank up the heat and water change/vacuum daily or should I just wait and see if any more spots develop before forcing the other two fish to go through a heat wave?

Thanks,

Eric
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Post by Pufferpunk »

I'd wait & observe.
You are getting sleepy... you only hear the sound of my voice... you must do water changes... water changes... water changes... water changes...

"The solution to pollution is dilution!"
Jayhawk
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Posts: 348
Joined: Sat Jun 04, 2005 1:04 am
Location: KC, MO, USA

Post by Jayhawk »

Thanks. That's what I was thinking, too.

Things like this never happen during normal weeks - I'll be out of town starting Wednesday morning, home Thursday evening, then gone until Sunday. Hopefully if it is ich, it'll progress slowly in the BW.

Eric
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