A Closer Look at Goldfish Ick – Part 2 (Treatment)
Before reading this post, it would be advisable to read “A Closer Look at Ick – Part 1 (The Life Cycle)”. Several of the terms and concepts mentioned there will be referred to in this post.
Preparation
Once ick has been discovered in a tank, the first task is to prepare the tank for treatment. If any filters contain activated carbon for chemical filtration, remove it. The activated carbon will remove the medication from the water. UV sterilisers and protein skimmers should also be switched off in order for the treatment to work effectively.
The water in most goldfish tanks is at room temperature (roughly 18 Celsius/65 Fahrenheit), so there is no general requirement for a thermostat. However, using one to gradually increase the water temperature by half a degree celsius every day will reduce the length of treatment. This is because the ick is only treatable during the theront (free swimming) phase of the life cycle. Due to the fact that an increase in temperature speeds up the life cycle, the theront phase will arrive quicker at higher temperatures.
If possible, bring the water temperature up to 26 Celsius (80 Fahrenheit) and the treatment will be over in 10 days. Keeping the temperature low will mean the treatment will need to continue for 6 weeks. One word of caution though – when the ick life cycle takes a week, a new dose of parasitic infection comes round every week. If anything is wrong with the treatment program it could result in heavy infestation, and goldfish dying off quickly.
Finally remove any snails, and check if any aquarium plants present are sensitive to the recommended treatement – malachite green.
Treatment
Malachite green is a widely available chemical treatment for ick. Other chemicals that can be used are formalin, copper, quinine hydrochloride, methylene blue and sodium chloride. However, non of these are any better than malachite green, which has the advantage of been successfully used to treat ick for many years.
Follow the dosing instructions on the label to the letter, taking care to avoid eye and skin contact. Malachite green leaves a stain on almost everything it touches.
At the ideal temperature, continue the treatment for 10 days. This will ensure that the theront phase of the ick life cycle will have been exposed to the malachite green. During the trophozoite and tomont phases, the chemical will have no effect on the parasites. In both cases they are enclosed in protective cysts that are impervious to any known treatment.
Although the life cycle only takes a week at this temperature, the treatment should go on for 10 days in order to make sure that all traces of ick have been removed.
It is worth noting that the treatment for ick treats the water. When treating the vast majority of goldfish diseases it is the goldfish itself that is treated. However ick can only be killed when it is vulnerable, and that is when it is out in the water.
Prevention
As is the case with every goldfish illness, prevention is better than cure. Make sure the water is tested regularly, feed the fish a balanced diet, change the water regularly and don’t put too many goldfish in the tank. These measures should be par for the course in every single goldfish tank and pond.
Also, never buy aquarium plants that are in a tank with fish in the pet shop. Tomonts stick to plants, and a single one provides an easy passage for up to 1000 individual parasites.
When bringing a new fish home for the tank, put it in a quarantine tank for whatever length of time the ick life cycle takes at the water temperature of the quarantine tank.
Ick is common and deadly, but following the advice above will save goldfish from the disease, and bring them back to rude health as quickly as possible.
Tags: ich, ichthyophthiriasis, Ichthyophthirius multifiliis, ick
September 6th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Help 2 of my goldfish have come up with white spots all over them which is ick. I cant affard any treatment and i dont even know where to get it from. Will they carry on living without the treatment? if not how long will it take for them to die?
September 6th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Use ordinary salt. You will need 3 teaspoons of salt for every gallon of tank water. Dissolve it in some water you have removed from the tank, then pour it in to the flow of the pump.
When you do your weekly water change, top up the salt levels according to how much water you took out.
To answer your questions, they will probably not survive if you don’t treat them. Hopefully they will not die if you go with the salt treatment.
Good luck
September 18th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Hi there,
I noticed that my fish had little white spots on them a while ago and treated them with a White Spot Cure that I bought at the local aquarium shop. I was told that it may take some time for the treatment to work. However, it did nothing even after full course. I went back and got a ‘Tonic’ which apparently is a treatment for a whole host of diseases including ich, fin rot and fungal skin diseases (contains malachite green). I’m midway through the course and one fish has died from what looks like fin rot and the others have suddenly got cloudy eyes, furry fins and have gone off their food. It pretty much happened overnight!! Do you think that treating them with antibiotics will help or maybe the disease has spread too much?
Any help would be appreciated as I feel a little helpless!
Cheers.
Kim
September 20th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Sounds a lot like a bad bacterial infection. Your fish seem to have more than one problem, so you need to get on top of the situation quickly. Your next port of call should be a vet.
If not all of your fish are affected, remove the ones that are to a treatment tank.
October 15th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
hello, admin. my goldfish has white spot on it gills few days ago and i do twice seawater treatment to remove it. however, the white spot continue appear and now the white spot is gone. what should i do for following prevention?
October 15th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
As I mentioned in the article, the best prevention is to keep the water clean and the fish healthy.
However, it may not have been ick. Have a read at this article about sexing goldfish. The spots may have been breeding tubercles on a male goldfish.
It’s not the right time of year if you are in the northern hemisphere and your fish are in a pond, but entirely possible if they are in an aquarium.
March 13th, 2009 at 10:50 am
I got my son goldfish as he is intrested in my bro-iin law’s tropical fish but these goldfi
sh started getting white spots now my son is crying all the time because thse fish are dying and i bought more ,but these fish are the same could anyone please help me sort this problem out , even some advice on what ive done wrong and how to solve it .
Could anyone please give me advice ,is it about my new tank ?
thanks a lot .Derek
March 26th, 2009 at 2:21 am
MY GOLD FISH HAS WHITE SPOTS ON THEIR MOUTH I”AM NOT SURE IF IT’s ick but i have changed the water. two of them died. but the other two. and my algea eater are still tyring . the algea eater has white parts of his tail that looks like a mouth on the end of it’s tail. please can you tell me what i need to do i”ve tried ick treatment but it has’nt worked. so now i’am tryin the salt. i have a fifty five gallon tank. not sure how much salt i should use.
April 17th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Hi, can anyone please help me? I have 1 goldfish with ick and two alge eater and one feeder fish, my goldfish is the only one sick so is the rest going to be ok? Also my goldfish is in a bucket right now with salt like stuff on his body so I added one teaspoon of salt and a heater but with no filter or oxegen is he going to get better? And how long do I leave him in their for? If anybody can help I thank you so much
May 6th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
I have 4 fantail goldfish and one of them seems to have clamped fins that look like a diagnostic diagram of ick. this has been going on for around 10 days. the other fish seem to be normal, and my tank is around 2 months old.
can I treat it with 3 teaspoons of salt for every gallon of tank water as explained above, and for how long. do I have to remove the carbon from the filter during treatment.
thank you for your help
June 4th, 2009 at 1:24 am
JUST bought some “feederfish” from my local petstore this weekend and the next day i was sure they were sick, looks to b ick and so far 1 has died,
learned we are brainwashed to think these fish should only last a few days, they can last 20 yrs, they are just treated badly!
dont think i can get to a petstore in time to save them
going to aqu services to buy any other fish I should have in the 1st place didnt have trouble w them when i had tanks yrs ago in hs.
dont want to try salt i killed off my fish last time in hs
June 8th, 2009 at 10:42 am
ray: without oxigen, the fish will die. fish has to have oxigen. derek: no, its not a new tank, if you get a fish with ich, treat it with ich-away by wardley and then 24 hours after treatment, change 50% of the water and then, treat it again 3 days later. then, a week from that, change 100% of the water. glad to help.
June 29th, 2009 at 12:14 am
HI, I have a 15 gallon tank with 2 beautiful goldfishes. One of them is a common and the other is a commet. But recently my cousin wanted me to take care of his 3 commet fishes and I put them in the tank with my fishes. I realised that they had bunch of white spot on them and I remembered that when fish wants to make babies this happens. But surely this was not the case because one of them lost half of its tail. So i removed them from the tank and quarantied those 3 in a small fish bowl no bigger then 1-2 gallon. I aslo added some medication referred by the petstore. My question is that even before I took the fishes from my cousin I noticed that the fishes had this white spots for lets say emm 2-3 months. SO are the fishes going to survive if I keep them in medication?
July 10th, 2009 at 12:55 am
I had a goldfish-like-carp-like fish for about two/three years which was healthy and lovely until only recently. My sister bought a used fish tank, a 20 gallon one, and went to one of the pet chainstores nearby to buy a few pretty goldfish and some guppies. I decided to let my fish in with hers and recently he has shown signs of ich. One o f her gold fish died and mine looks really sad and unhealthy.
We went and bought some medication and he still has the fungus all over his body.
I see that adding salt to the water is an alternative and am curious if I could add some coral as well. We have some lying around and wanted to know if it would harm them by sticking it in. We would like to use it as a preventative measure. My fish is now separate from the others because he is so sick. I will continue to add the ich medication, but would like to learn more about the salt treatment.
July 10th, 2009 at 12:58 am
Note on the above comment: the coral is not alive, as in it has not been in water as we have never owned saltwater fish; it is old and from long ago traveling.
November 18th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
I have 3 goldfish, and algea eater and a snail in my tank. The goldfish now have ick. Can humans or dogs catch ick? or the parasite that causes? I had to put my hand in the tank so i was wondering if i will get it? just in case my dog licks the water.. could they get it? How long will this ick parasite live in the tank?
November 27th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
I am in the process of treating my tank and the white spots seem to have abated. I’m wondering what other precautions I should take with equipment that have not been immersed in the tank such as the carbon I took out of the power filter and the tubing for water changes, etc. I’m paranoid that they might have some residual ick on them even if they’re dry.