I am 7 days into cycling a 90 litre fishtank with two telescope goldfish.

Question

I am 7 days into cycling a 90 litre fishtank with two telescope goldfish. I have been using aqua safe dechorinator and bio cultures for the filter to establish good bacteria. My problem is one of my fish definately has whitespot/ich. What do i do? (I have a whitespot treatment that contains formaldehde and malachite green oxalate; that i used unsuccessfully previously on an uncycled fishtank, and lost two fish. This is a different tank now.) I want my fish to survive, what do you recommend i do, cycle the tank first or treat the problem NOW?

HAZE

Answer 1

Your fish has a disease called Ich (pronounced "ick").

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthyophth...

Ich is a parasite that looks like tiny white dots all over your fish. It is very very common, and almost never fatal. Any pet store should sell ich treatment. It should be completely gone inside a week if you follow the directions.

Fish diseases in general don't like warm water, and goldfish can tolerate water up to 90 degrees. I would start keeping your tank at 72 to 80 degrees all the time. Aquarium salt will also kill most parasites. Neither of these will interfere with Ich treatment...so do all three (medicate, temp and salt). Do not use table salt. Table salt has iodine which is toxic to goldfish.

In general, it is advisable to keep only one fish in the tank until it is cycled. You don't need to add cultures...the benign bacteria are already on your fish when you bring them in from another tank.

Answer 2

You need to treat the tank for ich.  This will kill your fish faster more than likely due to the stress from the ammonia spike is why he got ich in the first place.  You need to remember to do your water change, remove the filter and treat the tank.

If you are concerned about ich, you can move your goldies to a dechlor water filled bowls and treat them there.  Let the tank continue to cycle while you are treating them in the bowls.  keep them in a cool spot while treating and don't add salt.

Answer 3

Do a 50% water change, then add 1/4 cup of rock salt, sea salt or non-iodized table salt to the tank.  The salt will kill any free swimming ich paracites and encourage the goldfish to grow more protective body slime.  Change 20% of the water daily thereafter but do not add any more salt.  If you have any other aquariums, switch filters and you won't have to worry about cycling the new tank.

Answer 4

The ich medications you name will kill your beneficial bacteria and you will have to start all over from scratch in cycling your tank.  I think you should continue cycling and attempt to treat your fish for ich with aquarium salt (1 tsp/gallon), turning up the heat and intensive gravel vacuuming and daily 20-30 percent water changes.  In my experience this has just as much chance of getting rid of ich as medication and it won't damage your bacteria and destroy your attempts to cycle your tank.

Answer 5

Treat the problem now before it gets worse. Add aquarium salt as per the directions and slowly up the tank temp to around 80F.

Answer 6

IMO you should treat it now, the faster you start treating ich the more likely they are to survive. the fish before were most likely killed by the ich not the water.

Answer 7

I would cycle it first cuz you loose some of your biological filter when you treat for ich. If you do treat you might hurt the fish & you will hav to start all over with the cycleing.