Cure fish with white spot - Ich treatment

Notice your fish with white spot growing on them? This is a common fish disease, known as ich or ick. white spot ich usually grow on fish that are not healthy, weak, when they are prone to disease. this disease is not consider fatal to fish at the beginning stage, but will be fatal if not treated properly. Luckily this ich disease is easy to treat. But before that lets take a look at ich's characteristic.

Ich cycle

there are 3 cycle for this fungus, you can check it on wikipedia for more details. It it not that important though all you need to know is that you can only kill ich on certain time when the cycle finish which is around 3 to 5 days for hot climate like malaysia, where water temperature is around 28 to 30 degree celsius.

Ich Symptom

-your fish will feel itchy, and will rub their body on rock surface or aquarium decor.

-white small dots(around 1mm) will grow on your fish's fin (normally on starting period), and later area on entire fish body.

Ich Treatment

-use of blue treatment liquid(Methalyne Blue or Malachite Green)and aquarium salt(Sodium Chloride)

I once got my 3 ft tank infected with ich, every fish in the tank got small white dots growing all over the fish. Looks troubling. It was a disaster... This problem occur after i introduce new fish into my aquarium, it was some platy. After few days i throw them in tank, they show white dots sign, then i quickly net them out to quarantine tank but it was too late, another few days later i notice other fish all got same white dots growing over them.

So here is what i do to treat the whole tank

buy the blue treatment liquid(Methalyne blue - this is what i use) and a pack of aquarium salt (or alternatively table salt)from local pet store. When you say blue water or white ich they usually gave you this.

You'll need to remove the live plants from the tank that is in treatment. Also remove and activated carbon from your tank.

then apply the Methalyne Blue or Malachite Green ich treatment according to dosage written on the bottle. The water will then go blue.

Now put in aquarium salt as of 1 tablespoon per 5 gallon. Use salt that has no buffering capacity to avoid messing with your aquarium water chemistry such as PH and KH.

Now the water will get less blue everyday, so add more treatment liquid each day to make it look like the first time blueness. Leave it for 5 days, then notice that now the fish is free from ick. Congratulations, now your tank is fully cured (Free from fungus and parasite). Change 1/2 water every 3 days. don't worry the blue will go away itself.

So things learned, next time when buy fish put them into quarantine tank for few days first, take good look at them, only put them into main tank when confirmed they are healthy. If i did this, it really prevent the previous disaster.