# Possible ICH?



## dvorak (Mar 12, 2012)

one of our two new guppys had been scratching his side against out gravel and rocks lately, and i think i see a faint white spot on his side fin. I ran to PetCo and got Kordon Ich Attack as soon as I noticed to help get rid of it. On the instructions it states to "Remove carbon from filter and turn off any protein skimmer" but my filters are the Aqueon cartridges with the carbon inside the filter. should i just take out the entire cartridge or just leave it? Any other precautions or medications i should use? Also does ICH spread through the water? Would putting him in a floating Breeding/Isolation tank help keep it from spreading?

Also i should add that when we got our guppys from the aquarium store, some of the other guppys had some pretty bad ICH already.


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## Obsidian (May 20, 2007)

Okay #1= Do not EVER buy fish in a tank that already has disease in it unless you know you can cure them AND you have a quarantine tank. Then, still don't do it. 

#2 Ich is in the tank so separating him means nothing. 

#3 Cut the carbon out of the filter for now (I've heard of others who have done this). Get a new filter that you can get separate media for later LOL. I had one of those filters once and I just stuffed it with different media and never used the cartridges. You don't want to discard the media at this point though because you need the bacteria. The med is going to take a serious hit to your bacteria so you want to keep as much as possible. 

I am fairly serious about the new filter advice. In my opinion it is always better to have a filter you can have separate media in than to get a filter that has the carbon in the pad, there will be times like this when you don't want the carbon, and then you are stuck. 

I am a personal fan of the AquaClear brand. Their filters work well and you can configure media however you want. 

You will want to re-introduce carbon when it is time to pull the med back out.


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## dvorak (Mar 12, 2012)

Are there cartridges that I can buy like that for my current filter (Aqueon quiet flow) or would I have to get a whole new filter?


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

I don't know of any non-carbon cartridge for the quietflow. Agree with cut the carbon out of the old cartridge and buy a new cartridge to remove resid med after treatment. Because the stiffness comes as much from the holder as the cartridge, you might be able to put a piece of square sponge in place of the cartridge or a square piece of that blue aquarium filter stuff. But you don't want to be changing all your media at once despite the claims that bacteria grow on the blue plastic. when you do have to get a new cartridge, watch and see if you get a 'mini-cycle' with a brief ammonia and/or nitrite spike.


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## arch aquatics (Feb 28, 2012)

i prefer the 82 degrees and a pinch of salt method to get rid of ick and such


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## dvorak (Mar 12, 2012)

Yea i'm pretty positive it's ICH now I see some more white spots developing on our two guppys, also some of the other fish are starting to "scratch" by flicking by either a plant leaf or rock. I cut out the carbon from our cartridge and I also took your advice and ordered a new filter that will take different media configurations. I got the Fluval C2 which seems to be an updated version of the AquaClear. Would you recommend I leave my current filter until treatment is done, or can i swap them out when i get the new one?


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## lohachata (Jan 27, 2006)

remove the filter cartridges and place in another tank..raise temp to 82-86 F.....treat as per directions with "Aquarisol"


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