# When to stop treating fish for ich



## Sabotage (May 9, 2012)

Hello, I have a tank with two fancy goldfish, one common goldfish and an albino catfish. Recently, my two fancy goldfish got ich and so i treated the water for ich with the chemical solution i bought at the store (the one that turns your water blue). I've been following the instructions for two days and was wondering when you know the fish are healthy enough to be off the medicine. I know you can see on the fish if he's healthy, but i know the parasite has a complex life cycle and i don't want to risk re-infection. My concern about the length of time is that i treat them because of the small catfish, as the bottle ich medicine warns against using it with small fish. So, what is a sufficient amount of time to keep adding the medicine after they appear "okay" (no white spots)?


----------



## Mikaila31 (Dec 18, 2008)

I treat for 1-2 weeks AFTER all visible signs and behavior of the parasite have disappeared. Reinfection with ich is very common because people often do not treat long enough. Thats not enough information for me to know what you are treating with. I've always used a copper med when dealing with ich.


----------



## Shewbert (Dec 16, 2012)

Ick is a paracite that burrows under the skin of fish, it lays eggs then falls off, the spots you see are the egg sacs under the skin.
So in effect we have to treat the tank, not the fish, so all effective treatments are designed to kill the trophite form of the disease while it is in the tank. The mature ich organisms that cause the problems on the fish do not die from treatment, but fall off in a couple of days during their normal life cycle and then their offspring die from the treatment in the water.
Hospitalise the fish to a fresh tank with the treatment formula in it, do not treat the main tank as any ich in there will die off in a few days as they do not have any hosts to attach themselves to.
When all of the spots fall off (then killed by the chemicals) keep the fish in a quarantine tank for at least 7 days, any reinfestation will show up between 7 and 10 days.
There are many treatments for ich, we found that copper based ones work fastest in making the ich sacs fall off, but remember to follow the instructions carefully as copper is poisonous to fish, use the medication in conjunction with some stress coat to ease the stress, the fish do not normally die from the ich unless it is a bad infestation, they normally die of stress.
Hope this helps, but get the fish out of the tank and hospitalised.
Need to know more just ask
Let me know how you get on
Ray


----------

