The Puffer Forum

Hi everyone my sister had a fish that had ich. she's treating it now by keeping the temp at 86 F and there is no more white spots on the fish, but the problem is that a large portion of my snails that I feed my puffer are in her tank. So here's my question, when will it be safe to feed my puffer these snails that are in her tank, or how can I make it safe? My sister is starting to complain about there being too many snail in her tank now. So I need to get them out soon and they are the perfect size for my puffer but I don't want to get my puffer sick.
Any suggestions?

Quarantine them in a separate tank with heating (75-80F) and aeration and feeding and weekly water changes without any fish in the tank for 4 weeks. Then you can be sure that they are carrying no Ich. Otherwise you will never be sure. Too many Ich treatments fail, leaving a silent infection.

Anything alive should be quarantined similarly before adding to an existing healthy tank.

HTH

+1 to RTR. Also, she needs to keep up the ich treatment for 21 days after all spots are gone.

Pufferpunk wrote:+1 to RTR. Also, she needs to keep up the ich treatment for 21 days after all spots are gone.

I hate to argue... but 10 days of treatment is plenty. There's not need to spend the extra $$$ for treatment that long. I've used Jungle Labs "Ick Guard" on 3 occassions. It has cleared the ick, without it returning, in 2 treatments each time. I dose the tank, do a 50% WC after 2 days.... dose again.... do another 50% after two days. This has been enough to clear my tanks of ick. They've now been clear of ick for a few years.

I agree 100% about the quarantine of new fish. I quarantine my for 6 weeks before adding them to main tanks. I currently have 5 tiger barbs in quarantine waiting to be released into my 75 gal.

Ich is pernicious. In theory it should be easily cleared withing 10 days, but there are a lot of "Ifs" in that calculation. It is difficult for many to grasp that Ich is not really a skin parasite, but is a gill parasite. External skin infections show only when the gills are already crowded with cysts. The less experienced also tend to confuse clearance or recovery of surface lesions with clearance of the parasite - the encysted parasite leaves the lesion - recovery time from that skin (and/or gill) inflamation is just healing time, there is no parasite left at that site long before the lesion heals. I call a month to six weeks minimum full recovery time, but the parasite itself should have been killed off within 3 of its cycles, of ~9 days at or above 80F.

So, yes, 10 days Rx (Rx = medication or treatment) should clear the parasites. But full recovery is barely possible within a month and six weeks is more likely. Even there, the term "full recovery" is misleading. The damage done to the gills is permanent, it rever really goes away. Post-infection gill epithelium is thickened and scarred. It will never again allow O2 (and other material) transit as well as it did before infection. There can be some new gill filaments developed post-infection, but the respiratory capacity and function will never again equal what it was before infection.

The great danger is that incomplete eradication of the parasite can easily lead to chronic Ich infections limited to the gills only. Recovered fish do have some degree of immunity to the parasite. It is not enough to wipe it out in post-infection fish, but enough to limit it to the gills only in such fish. That is where and how all the myths of "Ich always being present" arose. Those myths are false. Like most parasites, Ich cannot survive long away from its host. But low-grade (i,e,, small numbers of parasites) can certainly persist in post-infection fish if treatment is not done properly. It is not easy to detect.

So, the bottom line is that all the above posts are essentially correct - it all depends on how compulsive you are on being "certain" that the infection is really and completely wiped out.

I am one of the really compulsive hobbyists.

Sort of like when your doctor say to take all of your anti-bionics even if you feel better. But most people don't and they have old bottles of penicillin in their medicine cabinet.