How the bloody hell do you get rid of it LOL I've been treating my tank for 2 weeks now with Interpret Anti Spot treatment, and all the fish are covered in it!

Meds only work at one stage in the white spots life, I cant remember what stage but thats what ive read. Best way to treat it is to up the temp 3-4C cover the tank in a towel or something so its dark and keep up with the treatment.

By raising the temperature you make the cysts hatch and they fall to the bottom where they continue the cycle and reinfest the host fish. After hatching they can be killed with the medication. Treating while the white cysts are on the body does nothing. After raising the temperature and the cysts fall off you can use a syphon hose vaccum to suck them up as well. If the temp. is not raised and the tank not treated right the cycle will just continue.

Thank you! Will get onto that right now!

I agree with the above raise the tank temp hun

This thread was moved to the general fish health section.

Storm

Well I dont seem to be doing very wel here. Have lost two fish today (tetra's who were COVERED) and looks like the other 4 tetras are going as well now. But on the plus side, the rams, fighters and plecs have no spots and look perfectly healthy! Are certain species more likely to have it than others? And why does it only seem to be affecting them and not the others?

It will invade the whole tank hun... lights out, towel over the tank, do the heavy salt plus the meds if the ok with salt. species won't make a diff but smaller fish will die first.

hoover daily but bleach (milton and rinse) the siphon, nets, bucket inse too and hands between tanks, sounds like its a heavy dose hun.

treat for ten days, min constant.. when it falls off it reinfests in 3-4 days but i suspect you're past the first invasion cycle so have a continuous infection going on.

whitespot clears quick as long as you are fast and heavy to treat it

I once had whitespot only affect my BNs. I delayed treating as I was confused as to the absence on any other fish, but when I did, it cleared up really quickly. I don't know why no-one else got it.

some fish can be semi-immune... usually if they've had it before they won't be as quick to get it a second time.

@ Time.... i'd suspect your bn's got it first due to being bottom dwellers, they'd be the first fish the ich would come into contact with from hatching in the substrate and looking a host. It probably would have took a few ich lifecycles before the top dwelling fish would get infected too.

@Mands
The reason the smaller fish like neons are likely to die first even with the same amount of spots is surface area. A 1mm spot on an inch long fish would be doing more harm than the same on a 4" fish.

Where the spots are attached to the fish the parasite is actually burrowing and feeding on the fish's flesh and immune from mediction. When the parasite has fed enough it drops to the floor, multiplies to produce about a thousand new parasites, these then go in search of the first host they find. When the new 'baby parasites are looking their host this is the only time the meds will affect them.


Temperature rises speeds up the ich lifecycle so you can get the meds dosed in the free swimming stage. Free swimming stage lasts 3-4 days in a warm aquarium and is the only stage you can kill them. If they don't find a host in this time they will die but in a pond or cold water tank they will live far longer.

Darkening the tank will help reduce the fish stress although it won't actually affect the ich

Freshwater ich doesn't like salt and it will either kill them or atleast stress the ich enough to slow them down on the host hunt depending on the strength.

Meds while free swimming will kill them but be careful about reintroducting the ich via nets or other equipment... (hence milton in between uses and especially between tanks) If you've had definate ich present for more than a few days then you've ich in all different stages of it's life so you need to be heavy with meds for atleast 5 days after all spots are gone to kill off any remaining ones that are yet to hatch.

Siphoning the bottom will help remove a lot of the ich during the reproductive and free swimming stages, apart from that I wouldn't bother too much about big water changes.

If its a blue ram i would be very care full adding slat as there very sensitive to things like that. If the only fish in there are the rams, bettas, neons and a plec i think you could easily raise the temp to 30c which will be no problem short term for the plec and neons and the rams will thrive with a temp around that.

Yeah they are german blue rams. So that's a no go on the salt? Damn, was hoping that would help as it looks to be a real heavy infestation. What has got me curious is the plec had it quite heavy, but he is now clear, and it's the tetra's (black ghost/red ghost & flame tatra's). I treated again 2 days ago, so will treat again tomorrow. The tetra's are really not looking good, hanging at the surface, covered in white spot and not moving much. Is it worth moving the tetra's to another tank since they are the most heavily infested?

You might get away with adding a bit of salt but just be careful not to add to much and do it slowly not all in one go.

I thought the reason you keep the tanks covered was because sunlight causes the active ingredient in the medication to break down? It definitely helps to keep the tanks dark anyway... seems the only thing to do is to keep treating, and raising the temp will speed up the parasite's life cycle which should hopefully mean the newly hatched ones are exposed to the medication more quickly.

interpet white spot treatment isn't the strongest of meds, might be worth changing to something else.

Tetra General tonic works well (it also kills velvet)

Well Im popping to Hollybush later so hoping I can pick something up there. Gutted that Im being beaten by bloody whitespot!