The Puffer Forum

Okay, so Kai has ich. Can I just raise my temp to 86F to eradicate it or will she not handle that well?

Also, I will be getting some salt next weekend. I still don't, nor can I afford a hydrometer, however. Can I just slowly increase the SG weekly until I'm at 2tsp a gallon? I read that will make it a good range for her. I will still get one as soon as possible but I figured if I could at least get some salt in the tank, we may not have to start dealing with more issues like ich that I'm almost certain are from her being in fresh water.

On a better note, she's almost doubled in size!

If it was me I'd treat her with aquarium salt and an increase in temp first. Then when she's healthy do a big water change and start adding marine salt to make it brackish. Also you'd be better off waiting until you can afford a refractometer before you start adding marine salt.

I have canning and pickling salt in my fish cabinet, which is the same thing as aquarium salt but loads cheaper.
How much should I use? She gets her weekly WC on Saturday, can she wait until then or should i add some now anyways?

Is there a particular reason you prefer the salt route to the heat route?

Better to just use table salt. Don't forget large (80%) WC, every other day, thoroughly cleaning substrate.

Heat speeds up the life cycle of ick but does nothing to kill it. Salt kills the ick in its free swimming form. Combine the two and you kill it relatively quickly. Use just heat and it keeps attacking your fish, use just salt and it takes forever.

Heat actually does kill ich at the proper temps and it is not necessary to clean up the "bodies" of the ich when treating because they are already dead. Canning and Pickling Salt is essentially table salt. It's pure salt, anti-clumping agents that you find in most "table" salts.

You absolutely MUST remove LIVE free-swimming cysts/eggs with large WC & thorough gravel cleaning, often, to stop the reoccuring lifecycle of this parasite. RTR has an interesting article on salt in our Library.