Aquarium Fish World

My Cardinal Tetra Has Ich (White Spot Disease)

Yesterday I noticed the Cardinal Tetra in my 55 Gallon Aquarium had these little white spots on his body.  There weren’t many of them, just a few, but I had to take a closer look to see if it could be Ich (White Spot Disease).  Ich (Ichthyophthirius multifiliis), also called White Spot Disease, is a very common parasite amongst aquarium fish and it’s not unusual for you to run into this if you have an aquarium.

The good news is that I caught it really early so I should be able to treat it, hopefully without any fatalities.

Ich goes through three stages in its life cycle.  The white dots you can see on my Cardinal Tetra is Ich in its “trophont” stage of the life cycle.  In this stage it is visible to the naked eye and its actually attached and burrowed under the mucus coating of my fish where it feeds on the body fluid of the poor Cardinal Tetra.

In a few days it will finish feeding and detach itself from the fish, going into the next part of the life cycle called the “tomont” stage.  In this part of it’s life cycle it will swim around the aquarium, looking for a place like my plants or other surfaces to attach itself to so that it can begin to reproduce.  In this stage it basically starts to reproduce like crazy and then within a few days it will turn into hundreds of new little parasites called “thermonts” in the third part of the cycle.

These “thermonts” are then going to swim around my aquarium looking to attach themselves to more of my fish to hide under their mucous coating and start the whole cycle again, each time multiplying and spreading all over my aquarium.

While in the “trophont” stage, the Ich parasite is protected from any type of medication that I can put in the tank, but once it detaches itself from my fish and goes looking for a surface to begin it’s reproductive cycle, it will be succeptible to treatment by medication because it will no longer be hiding in the mucous coating of my fish.

So basically, while its attached to my fish (the trophont stage) it is safe.  As soon as it detaches and tries to reproduce (the tomont and thermont stages) and find other fish to attach to, that’s when this parasite can be treated with medication which is exactly what I’m going to do.

I’ve done a bit of research on the problem and I’m going to treat the Ich (White Spot Disease) problem as follows:

• I’ve done a 20% water change on the tank, because it’s not recommended to do any water changes during the medication process so I figured it would be best to do one right before I start.
• I’m going to increase the water temperature of my tank to about 80-82ºF, which speeds up the life cycle of the parasite, which will get it off my fish faster trying to go into its reproductive cycle.
• I’ve removed the carbon charcoal insert on my canister filter as charcoal will just filter out the meds I’m putting in and we don’t want that.
• I’m adding in a product called Ich X from Aquarium Solutions to kill the parasite. This particular product calls to add about 5ml per 10 gallons of water, so for a 55 Gallon tank I’m supposed to put in about 20-25ml, but I’ve been reading that if you have Tetras in the tank you’re only supposed to use about half the dose, so I only put in about 10ml in.

From what I’ve been reading, you’re supposed to keep treating the tank about every 24hours for a period of at least 3 days after all white spots disappear off the fish.  The product calls for a partial water change with each treatment, so I’m probably going to do a 10-20% water change for the next few days and see how it goes.

This is not bad anyways as I’ve wanted to do some partial water changes to reduce the Ammonia levels in my tank anyways.

Here’s a picture of what Ich-X looks like:

Actually, while I had my canister filter opened up to remove the carbon charcoal insert, I also took the opportunity to put in some “Ammo Chips” which I’ve been meaning to do for a few days now.  These “Chips” help to reduce the ammonia levels in your aquarium tank.

The biological filter in my aquarium has been taking a while to get established as I go through the initial cycle of my tank and so the Ammonia levels have been sitting at about 1ppm for about a week now and I wanted to help reduce that so I bought these “chips” to add into my filter.  Hopefully it helps to lower the levels a bit.

Here’s that the box looks like: