Fishy Fish Entry #10

Well this morning I checked on my fish, and it seems that Umi has way less spots than there were yesterday.

(click on the pick to enlarge it.)

It's not the best pic, but compared to the one I posted earlier, you can still tell there's an improvement.

You can't really see Naruto's tail because he's in the middle of spinning around... but he still only has two visible spots left on him... and as you can see, Sakura, my female molly, is spotless.

So I think maybe they're starting to get over it without medication. Keeping my fingers crossed ^_^

Fishy Fish Entry #9

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Fishy Fish Entry #8

Well, MOST of my fish are doing well on the 87 degrees/salt treatment for Ich (ick)...

The ones who had spots are pretty much cured. I only have two lingerers... (click on the pictures to enlarge them)

Naruto was among the first to show signs of Ick... he was covered in them. as you can see, he's almost clean... but there are at least two visible spots left. Problem is... I don't know if it's a reoccurance or if it's just lingering spots.

My young longnose whiptail Umi was the very last to get ick. She's not nearly as bad as she was... but as you can see, she's still covered in spots.

I'm at wits end about what to do. I slowly raised the temp to 87 as recommended, I added the proper amount of salt... I've done gravel vaccums to pick up loose spores once every few days... So I guess I'll have to use a medication to try and get rid of the ick. I won't use coppersafe cause not only have I had a bad experience, I've heard bad things about it... I'll try rid-ick or quick cure. I just hope I can pull it off.

Fishy Fish Entry #7

Ok, I got my water test kit in (which is suppose to be more accurate than the test strips I was using.

Ammonia is 0
Nitrites are 0
Nitrates are 0
and High Range pH is 7.4

so it seems the water is pretty good. I was worried because while some of my fish that were worse off are improving... but Ai (my whiptail) had a bunch of spots on her today that I never noticed before. but when I went to fill the viles for the water test this evening, I noticed Ai had fewer ick spores on her than this morning, and the fish worst off had even less spores than before.

So perhaps this is finally taking its course and we'll be in the clear soon. But I'm not letting my guard down yet. I'll keep up the treatment for the recommended 10 days, then slowly lower the heat down over the following few days... and eventually end with a water change and keep my fingers crossed.

Fishy Fish Entry #6

Well the tank has been at 87 degrees for about 24 hours... the fish seem to be doing fine. No one is swimming to the top as if they're in dire need of oxygen... so taking out a few gallons of water and letting the waterfall of the filter splash is making enough oxygen to compensate for the heat.

I also siphoned the gravel today... got about a half gallon of guck out. Will do another siphon on wednesday.

Everyone seems fine... but those who had ick, still seem to have it, and those who don't, some seemed to have picked it up. So its going to be a wait and see deal. I hear it can take anywhere from 10 days to 2 weeks to clear up with the heat, salt, and siphon.

Just as a reminder to myself... next time I siphon... put in at least 1 teaspoon of salt to compensate for the salt removed during the siphoning.

Genesis and Gary are doing really well. So are the 2 baby snails that were left in the Betta tank.

Sadly, the babies I put in a separate tank didn't fair too well. Not sure why. Water levels tested really good. Perhaps water was too cool... maybe the algae wafers weren't good... but at least I still have Gary and the two baby snails.

Fishy Fish Entry #5

Well, the ick remains. It wasn't an overnight thing like last time.

but I learned very quickly, just because they show no outward signs of Ick, doesn't mean it's gone.

I think the problem was the heat part of the treatment. My thermo was usually set at 75... so I raised it to 78.2 which is the highest it goes.

In order to speed up and then kill the Ick, you have to have it up to as close to 85 as you can for at least 10 days.

Today I bought a new heater and placed it in. Since the water temp is already 78, I put the heater to about 80, and I'll up it to 82 in a few hours once the fish have had a chance to get use to the new temp.

Since I don't have any extra airstones to aerate the water more as you should when you up the temp... I emptied out a few gallons of water.



normally I have the water up so that it's filled to the top and you can't see the water line. so as you can see, I removed at least 3 gallons of water.

I also took out the filter and bought a brand new cartridge. It was time to change cartridges anyway. So hopefully this will work.

On an up note, baby snails are doing well, so is Gary the snail.



Genesis is also loving life. I'm surprised, but he really loves the rainbow colored silk plants. I was worried that the bright colors would stress him out, but they were the only ones left at the store, and I needed something to place in there until the new ones come in.



He really enjoys hanging around them... and that's where I find him sleeping when I turn on the lights for the day... so I'll probably just leave those plants in there. So, things are going good for the betta tank.

keep your fingers crossed for the other tank.

Fishy Fish Entry #4

Well I checked on my fishes today, and I noticed Naruto has spots on his tail. They're hard to see, and they kind of blend in since he has shiney incandescent spots on his tail normally... but I'm assuming they're ick because they not only had an ick outbreak already, but they're little white dots.

So I did a quarter water change, added a tablespoon of salt to replace the salt I removed in the water change... took out the live plants not fairing well during the last salt/heat treatment, replaced them with a new fake plant, cleaned some of the other silk plants... I'll replace the remaining real ones once my new silk ones come in which should be tuesday.

This time I also added about 1.5 teaspoons of an ick medication since the original treatment didn't seem to work... and diluted it in a gallon of replacement water before placing it in the tank.

Once the tank was cleaned and refilled, I turned off all the lights in the tank room to give them a chance to just relax after the water change. Hopefully I did the right thing, and the spots aren't just part of his normal body shine. So we'll see.

Well while I'm worrying about that... at least my baby snails are looking good.