Tropical Fish Forums

[mjholmgren]

Hello all I've been a scavenger of this site for the past ten years or so and thank you all for your wisdom and help. I have three sick blue dempseys as of saturday (1-1.5") in a ten gallon qt tank. This tank gets little use as I have not purchased new fish in awhile so is also home to lots of plants and tree otos I was regretably to lazy to remove also three of my neons as dithers. I've been doing 10-20% water changes every other day since two days before purchase. Water is immaculate pH 6.7 gh 40ppm KH 30ppm. Yesterday I noticed ich! Began raising temp and adding salt I'm up to 84 degrees farenheight and half recommended dose of salts(intending to continue to add salt until I reach full dosage). Upon observing further yesterday I noticed stringy white poo. Going now to pick up Jungle Parasite Clear. My questions are a) I've seen on this board that it has been recomended to leave biological filtration in place during this treatment. Won't the treatment destroy this biological filtration? I don't use any carbon. b)Do I need to pull all my plants? c) am I crazy or on the right track?

Sorry about the novel and anything I may have forgetten.

Thanks Mike

[mjholmgren]

Well since I posted in a hurry earlier,had to drop my betterhalf of at work, run some errands, get the meds; thought I would include a few more details. I first learned of this fish back in say 04 from this site. Up until recently I had never seen this fish in person, beautiful fish. I saw them in petsmart, to my surprise, last thurs. spent the next couple days obsesing and researching, decided it was now or never. brought three home saturday. Initially two seemed very healthy and active while the third seemed very stressed prefering to hide out and refusing food. This got me concerned and I spent quite a bit of time on a blue dempsey forum looking for answers to his hunger strike. Stringy white poo, internal parasites, and worms seem to be very common among the ebjd juviniles and jungle parasite clear seems to be the hands down recomendation from that forum. well as fate would have it my petsmart additions had a couple minor ich spot. Ich doesn't concern me to greatly as I have had good success with salt and temp increase in the past. However, after I began treatment for the ich I noticed the notorious stringy white poo. Now today I also noticed quite a bit of flashing on rocks and plants. Now this I'm not so confident in dealing with especially since these dempseys are supposedly very tempermental. I generally try to avoid this kind of treatment but it seems that I'm left no choice here. I have much more trust in this site than the other so I wanted to see what you all thought.
Any advice, opinions, or comments would be greatly appreciated
Kinda scared I'm fighting a uphill battle

[mjholmgren]

Well I decided not to drop a JPC tab and let the heat and salt treatment run its course for a little bit. Some threads on the EBJD forum got me in a panic with all the lost fish. We'll see if I made the right choice. Decided to try an experiment. I took the blade of a knife and scraped a tiny bit of powder from one of the jungle tabs, dissoled this in water, soaked some pelets in it, and fed. Not sure if there is anything to be gained or lost from this. What do you think? Seemed a little less drastic than dosing the tank.

Thanks anyone,
Mike

[mjholmgren]

Well seeing as I'll be talking to myself figure I'll use this as more of a log or record book for the war. After getting the temp up to 86 deg F two of the new jacks got extremely active relentlessly pacing the tank and stressing the heck out of the third. So I decided to rehome the current resident of my 20g into my 30g. Its a little over crowded in the 30 but no real issues so far. I moved the two bullys, the ones with ich into the 20 hoping to isolate them incase it got worse. This was saturday. The third dempsey in the 10g came out of hiding and appeared much happier. Sunday I decided to use jungle parasite clear on the twenty as they were getting worse. Not really sure if this does anything for ich, its not listed as one of the parasites it treats on the package but I figured its called parasite clear and I think ich is a parasite. Now monday sure enough everyone in the 10g has ich on them as well. The 10g I will continue with heat treatment and hold off on any meds for a little longer.

[Zowie72]

Mike,

Good luck with your blue dempseys, they are beautiful fish, I've never kept them myself though. I don't really have any advice for treatment, but I am watching to see how you get on.

I have had ich in my community tank and treated it with increased temperature and Wunder White Spot Cure with no problems, no salt though as I didn't want to stress my corys. It didn't harm the biological filter, however if you use carbon in the filter it does need to be taken out as it will remove the medication, I believe the same is true of JPC.

I've not used JPC, but then I've been lucky enough not to have had to. So good luck, let us know how you get on.

Zowie.

[mjholmgren]

Thanks for the reply Zowie. Well I figured it was time for an update. First the ten gallon. The three neons are doing pretty well two of them I see no visible ich the thirds has a couple spots. The three otos and the jack in there are ablosutely covered not sure if they'll make it. The two jacks in the twenty are pretty much holding even. I'm gonna dose both tanks with ich guard here shortly. I'm surprised at how well the ich is flourishing in 88 degree water.

[Zowie72]

I'm sorry to hear your 3 otos and jack are still not doing so well, I hope they pick up soon.

I believe treating ich with increased temp and salt doesn't actually kill the ich it just increases its life cycle and you're relying on the fishes immune system to do the rest, the salt just aids in healing.

I hope things work out for you and your fishes!