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The tetras Mark gave me for my birthday are dropping like flies. The first signs of ich were evident when I got home Saturday from the auction, so I turned up the heat. I've done several water changes, and have been using rid ich since yesterday. Now all the Cardinals are covered and one of the Serpaes is showing spots on his fins. I've lost three cardinals already and the rest are very stressed. I know I shouldn't be too surprised, since I didn't get them from an LFS, but I have wanted to stock my 75 again and couldn't afford to do it until they were 80 cents apiece.

Wow. Sorry to hear it, Kenna. There are some strains of "super ich" being reported recently. It's ich that doesn't respond to the traditional treatments. You may want to look for quinine sulfate, since it is reported to work on super ich. Metronidazole might be another thing to try. You should be able to use these concurrently with the Rid-Ich+.

I experienced a case of it in a tank a while back myself. Formalin/malachite green (Rid-Ich+, QuickCure) didn't work. Copper sulfate (Aquarisol) didn't work. I finally mail-ordered in some straight malachite green (Nox-Ich), which isn't available locally, but was always my favorite. It did work.

Seem to have slowed the deaths dramatically last night. Didn't lose any over night, so a total of four so far. Continuing with heat, water changes, and even using the meds... which I never use. The Serpaes are starting to show light signs. Grrrr...

You might also want to add 2 tsps/gal. or more of salt-- though I can tell you that we had that level of salt in all our store tanks and still saw ich. Yet, you can find recommendations on the Web to use only 1 tsp/10 gallons. Sheesh. Despite the myths published many places, iodized table salt is fine and you can put it in all at once.

I always wondered, if the fish can adapt to salt in the water, why couldn't a "pita" parasite?

Fish have complex systems to maintain homeostasis (kidneys, etc), ecto-parasites generally don't until you hit nematodes.

Fish don't adapt to salt levels, they are already quite well equipped.

Kevin

Thanks, guys... Still holding at 4 Cardinal deaths... Still signs of ich, but not as stressed as they were. Sigh......