Ok here's what's going on. About 16 or 17 days I isolated my 3 fish to QT for an ich outbreak. I was treating with hyposalinity and half doses of copper. After 10 days the fish were clear of the spots and eating very eagerly. I began slowly raising the salinity. Currently I'm at 1.020. The past few days I noticed what I believed to be secondary infection in my bellus angel. Yesterday I began treating with furan-2. As of two minutes ago, I notice that she's loaded up with Ich. My foxface and black and white clown appear to be unaffected. How course of action should I take at this time to continue treatment? Thanks in advance.
Brian
1. To eradicate ich you should treat actively and continously for eight weeks. Not half or a third this duration. Six weeks might be OK.
2. You should have a lot of nitrification activity in the QT. meaning the medium for QT must have been very well cycled in advance.
3. You should have used UV against bacterial infection correctly in conjunction with hypo. Chance of concurrent bacterial infection would have been much reduced.
4. If you have no UV, bacterial infection is more likely to spread rapidly, affecting most fish.
5. Bacteria infection (concurrent with ich or otherwise) is bad per se, but it also makes the job of ridding the QT water of ammonia more difficult. Drug needed to treat bacterial infection has varying degree of impact on nitrification bacteria, from manageble mild to grave destruction. Copper or hypo (gradual) against ich has almost no impact on nitrification bacteria.
6. Now, you can use UV properly to reduce spread of bacteria infection. UV has no effect on ich.
7. If only one or two fish has bacterial infection, treat them separately in separate container with a portion of active medium. Maintain UV and hypo on other fish.
8. UV will degrade many drugs so cannot be used when any drug (except copper) is used. I use straight copper which is not affected by UV.
