okay so for years now my mother has had an aquarium at her job. my sister has maintained it for years now. it had goldfish and a pleco in it. a few weeks ago all the fish died from ich except for the pleco. my sister treated it with ich away and and spent 4 hours cleaning this 35 gallon aquarium. they continued treatment for TWO MONTHS. they went thru TWO entire bottles of ich away treating this ich. they have gone thru 3 dif batches of goldfish. so far they have all died. the pleco has remained apparently untouched. its a huge pleco. thats the sole survivor.

my sister left for college... and my mother in desperation has cometo me for a solution as i have had much luck with my own fish tanks...


SO OFL guys, here is my plea...iknow the ichaway stuff works most of the time. this strain is apparently resistant.

i need an atom bomb of a cure. i am considering the following... heat, salt, and chemicals. the resurants' aquarium is always popular with the kids and people come up there just to look at the golfish in it... there were some rather huge fantailgoldfish.


SO... the only thing in its a pleco. '

i have to do this in the morning.

what do i start with ??? how much salt can a pleco take without suffering a deadloss?

im almost tempted to bring a spare tank of mine up there, transfer that pleco to it, treat the fish in that tank, and pour a whole bottle of ich away into the main tank and bring a heater ortwo and crank the temp up to 95 and salt the hellout of water.


your thoughts???

i would move the pleco into your spare tank and just empty the other and start from scratch

they did that the last time.

wow thats some nasty ick then i really dont know but im sure someone else will

ive never had the ichaway medicine not work. im at a loss for what to do that is still safe for the pleco

Tim81595 wrote:

Win wrote

prior to emptying, the water is in bad condition, thus, the ich.
after the emptying, the water is no longer cycled, thus, fish died too.

pleco is the sturdiest fish know to aside from the mud fish, thus it
survive the ordeal.

having the pleco, and the system running, i will just go with regular
water maintenance, checking the water regularly until you attain
the ideal parameters. if the plec doesn't have any ich, just increase
the temp to 28 to 30 deg, aerate, and continue regular water change.

once good water parameters attain, you can put new fishes in it.

what does that translate in farenheit?

around 86 degrees Fahrenheit

cool ty all

well today the pleco was donated without my knowledge to a coworker. i went to go do the thing this morning and it was just an empty box full of water, i thought it had died. but no.. its doing just fine in an indoor koi pond.

so... im going to just frag this tank and scrap all the substrate, and sterilize it with venegar, and start completly from scratch. i think that will pay off better in the long run and end the possibility of another outbreak.

on a side note... there must be an ick epidemic around here, because i could not find any ick meds at 4 different fish shops or the walmart here. all sold out. what the hell is going on.

Get the carbon out of the tank when you are treating... it is absorbing all of the meds before they can do anything... take the charcoal out and treat it... Is the temp flexing allot?

it was an unheated goldfish tank, inside a resturant with thermo set at 74 degrees. and yes, the carbon was removed as per directions on the medicine. im convinced its the ick from hell and i will make it my mission to destroy and eradicate every last speck of it.