Please Help Before I Have an Empty Tank!

[sarahbellum]

I'm having some real problems with my fish tank. I had a bad case of Ich run thru it (still is) and its killing my fish. I've been putting medicine in it for over a week now, and I still have fish dying. At first, I just lost my talking catfish and a cherry barb... but then today I lost a black skirted tetra... and now I have an angel fish and a danio baby struggling for air. It kills me to watch them gasp, but I can't pull them out knowing that they are still fighting for life. My mom used to put her dying fish in ziplocs and freeze them... but now that I'm older, I've come to realize that it takes a while to freeze something... And fish aren't air breathers... so thats like us drowning. I hate it! What do I do? I've tried salt in the water, increasing the temp to 83*, using Ick Clear, Super Ick Cure... now I'm trying Para Guard... Been using the Para Guard for 4 days... did the "dip" for the fish... nothing is working. My fish LOOK better... (aren't covered in white dots) but are still dying. What do I do?

[CarterNichols]

i used "quick cure" with success.. make sure to remove carbon from the filter and maybe quarentine the really bad off fish if you can, good luck

also do massive water changes. 50+%

[emc7]

I like quickcure, but any ich cure can take up to 14 days and most work if ich is the only issue. In the mean time, check your water quality. Dead fish can cause ammonia and meds can hurt your filter's biology causing the tank to re-cycle. Add bubblers if you can. Oxygen is reduced by higher temps, and med, ammonia, and ich all cause breathing trouble. Remember to change water as directed on the meds and between treatment changes (med overdose can kill fish) and to remove the carbon from the filter. Cut back on feeding, odds are your fish don't feel like eating anyway. On this board, clove oil is often recommended for fish euthanasia. But I'm like you, I want to give the fish every chance. Fish that survive ich usually recover and never get it again.

[Buggy]

I can't help with the disease problem but I do have a quick means of euthanasia if you don't have/can't get clove oil. In a plastic bowl or bag mix 4-5 capfulls of rubbing alcohol and 1/2 cup or so (enough to cover the fish) of ICE water. Put in the dying fish and give a gentle swirl. 5 sec and it's over. I use this only when the fish is clearly not going to make it and is suffering.

[TheOldSalt]

Saprolegnia is a fungus that very frequently affects fish that are recovering from ick. It's nasty stuff, and frequently overlooked by those who assume the ick is the cause of the mortalities. Jungle used to make something called "Small Fish Saver" which worked well for this problem, but I haven't seen it around much lately. Any fungal treatments should be better than nothing, and keep up the salt.
83. Too hot to let the fish be comfy and breathe, too cold to get rid of the ick directly. Either let the temp drop back down to normal so the fish can get some oxygen, or crank it up to 95 to eliminate the ick all at once. It can't usually survive a few hours past 94, you see. In either case, increase the aeration in the tank.
The heat treatment is a bit extreme, and almost never recommended. I mention it only as a last resort. It's not without it's own complications, obviously, such as severely depressing your good guy bacteria while letting the bad ones get seriously busy.

[Louise163]

Need plenty of aeration with the high temp and med.
Once fish labour breath with plenty of aeration the parasites has damaged there gills and they usually end up dieing.

Never freeze a fish its takes a long time and the fish suffer.
If no cloves oil, you fill a bucket up with cold water or jug and add ice cubes till the water is freezing cold, place the fish in it should take about 30 seconds or less for the fish to die, leave the fish a while to make sure its passed on.

If you have to preform a water change during treatment, you just add the correct amount of med back to the water removed.