ich records

I kept track of what was going on in my aquariums with the ich outbreak, jotting down notes every day. It might help if I have to deal with this again in the future. Mostly for my own record, here's the notes:

20 gallon aquarium:
7/7 -  Larger SAE (Caleb) had ich spots on fins. Did a 25% water change.
7/9 -  Caleb 1 spot, Temp raised to 80°, 20% wc
7/10- Pinkie flashing, Temp to 84°, 20% wc
7/11- Caleb flashing, Temp to 86°, 25% wc
7/14- Caleb, Zippy, Pinkie ich spots, Buster glancing, Temp at 86°, carbon removed from filter, 4 tsp Ick Attack
7/15- Buster 2 spots, Temp 85-86°, 25% wc w/gravel vac, 5 tsp IA
7/16- 3 fem barb ich spots, Noodle and one Danio flashing, Temp 84°? raised to 86°, 25% wc
7/17- 2 fem barb ich spots, Temp 85-86°, 20% wc, 5 tsp IA
7/18-  Caleb 2 spots, all fem barb 2-3 spots, 1 fem barb flashing, Temp 86°, 20% wc, 5 tsp IA
7/19- Caleb, 1 fem barb 1 spot, Sangre flashing, Temp 85-86°, 4 tsp IA
7/20- fem barbs, SAE ich spots, Pinkie dashing about, 20% wc, 5tsp IA, 10 tsp aquarium salt (1/2 per gal) fishes stressed? SAE loose color, barbs hover, Pinkie inactive
7/21- fem barbs and Caleb numerous spots, Temp 86-87°, no wc, 4tsp IA (salt remains)
7/22- both SAE, 1 fem barb spots, Tilda spots? danio, male barb flashing, Temp 86-87°, no wc, 4 tsp IA (salt remains)
7/23- Caleb spots, 1 barb spot, Temp 85-86°, 4 tsp IA (salt remains)
          later in the day Tilda DIED, 25% wc w/gravel vac, replaced 1 tsp IA, 1/4 tsp salt per gallon replacement
7/24- both SAE spots, 1 fem barb split dorsal fin, largest fem barb flashing, Temp 87-88°, 4 tsp IA (salt remains)
7/25- SAE many spots, barbs and Pinkie none, Temp 86-87°, added sponge filter, raised water level, fishes active! SAE colored up again
7/26- Caleb spots, Noodle DIED, barbs ok, Temp 86-87°, 4 tsp IA
7/27- Caleb spots, other fishes ok, Temp 86°, 20% wc w/gravel vac, no salt in replacement, 2 tsp IA last dose (ran out)

10 gallon tank:
7/13- fem cherry barb flashing, Temp to 80°
7/14- both cherry barb flashing, Temp to 84°, 2 tsp IA
7/15- overnight from 85° to 90°! water level lowered, heater off until at 86°, 2 tsp IA
7/16- no flashing, no spots, Temp 86°, 20% wc, 2 tsp IA
7/17- Flash glancing, lowered water level, Temp 86°, 2 tsp IA
7/18- Flash crashed, male barb 1 spot dorsal? Temp 86°, 10% wc, 2 tsp IA
7/19- Flash crashed, barbs ok, Temp 86°, 2 tsp IA
7/20- Removed Flash DIED, 20% wc, no dose
7/21 - 7/26- barbs ok, Tempo 86°, no dose
7/27- barbs ok, 25% water change, Temp to 84°

The temperature on the 10gal is now a consistent 78°. I kept the 20gal at 86° for another full week, have brought it down to 84° and will lower a bit further each day until it's back just under 80°. Wasn't too bad. I only lost three fish, and one of those had been half-dead already. A bit upset that the two I lost in the 20gal were among my favorites, but I guess they were the more delicate fishes as well.

My treatment was not exactly consistent, because I kept trying to figure out what would be most effective. High temperature, salt and medicine are the usual methods- but most meds are bad for live plants and snails. The Ich Attack you can double the dose, or dose twice per day for bad infestations. It's supposed to be 1 tsp per 10 gallons, so in the small tank I was doing normal dose, in the larger tank a higher dose. Temperature of 85° is supposed to make the ich organism incapable of reproducing, but if you set your heater at 85°, it doesn't get triggered to turn on and warm the water until it drops a degree to 84°, so that's why I had it set at 86°- or tried to. A few times over or under-adjusted and it got too warm or cool again.

Side note- I found that there are pros and cons to the two different styles of aquarium heaters. My 20gal has an older heater, it hangs vertical on the back of the tank, with a knob to adjust temperature on the top- very generally, twisting one way goes higher, the other direction lowers. The 10gal has a newer one which is submerged. It also has a knob on the top, which has degrees marked around the dial. The vertical heater is easy to adjust- you just reach over and turn the knob every so slightly, then keep an eye on the thermometer and adjust again accordingly after an hour or so. But it's not as good at keeping the temperature stable. There have been times when the ambient room temperature dropped at lot at night- I don't always run heat at night in winter- and I'd get up in the morning to find the tank had lost several degrees of heat. The small tank is much trickier to adjust- the knob on the submerged heater sticks, so just turning it with one hand will make the entire heater rotate in its housing. I have to lower the water level so I can reach in with two hands (without flooding over), or use the aquarium claw to hold the heater still and adjust with other hand. Also, the numbers marked on the lever never match up with the actual temperature- right now the knob says 78 but the water is really at 82°. So it's a pain to adjust and I often turn it too far- it goes much warmer than I want to - have to go back and adjust it again- but once I do get it to where it's supposed to be, it's very good at keeping the temperature stable.

The other nice thing about it is that I don't have to worry about the water level dropping too low from evaporation in my small tank -this is a plus with the sponge filter too (working great so far!). Whereas in the big tank, if the water drops below a certain mark on the vertical heater, the heating element can crack and the heater break and maybe electrocute the fishes in the water or something. Read the fishkeeping forums, heater disasters are pretty common. Also in the big tank if the water level drops even farther my filter would stop running, (but it only gets that low when I remove more than five gallons of water).

So- some other observations. I thought salt was bad for the plants and snails, but further reading many sources said a very low dose (1/2 tsp per gallon) is safe enough. Catfishes are sensitive too- I don't know if it was the salt or the ich that killed my catfish. Noticed that at one point the siamese algae eaters were very pale, and the barbs not very active, kind of just hanging and drifting in the water. When I added the sponge filter, the higher oxygen levels really energized them, and the algae eaters' color came back immediately. I guess lowering the water level to agitate the surface and deliver more oxygen just wasn't enough, before. Also early on I wasn't doing gravel vac because now had the trumpet snails to do cleanup below, but then found out that the ich multiplies on the substrate, so important to gravel vac with every water change. But also it seemed my small tank recovered faster- I don't know if the barbs in there were just better able to fight it off? or because the medication level built up in the water, since I wasn't removing any water later on? Flash was doomed anyway- he had been ill for a long time. I noticed that most of the fishes would be flashing one day, then show spots the next- when they couldn't rub the irritation off their skins, I guessed that the ich spot would manifest the following day. Having not seen anybody new flashing in a while, nor any more spots, I'm hopeful it is finally gone.

That's it.