Ich and Fancy Goldfish?

Question

Hi and thanks in advance.

I have 3 goldfish (2 ryukins and a pearlscale) that live in a 65 gallon tank with a canister filter. Chemistry looks pretty good.

One of them looks like it is developing ich on it's dorsal fin. The spots are quite faint, and evenly distributed in sort of a grid pattern. You can mostly see them when the fin is erect and you look through it.

Anyway, I've read a good bit about this, and a lot of people swear by salting the tank and a lot of others say it's a total crock and you need to medicate. The salt concetration I see most is 0.3% which is something like 3 TEAspoons per gallon or ~195 teaspoons (4 cups?) in my tank.

That seems like a h**l of a lot of salt for a freshwater fish. I've slowly added about 1/3 of that and am not sure how good I feel about going further with it, though the fish seem fine so far. There's no way I'm raising the temp (72 now) to 80 though. Assuming I actually get the salt level up, how long does it have to stay like that to be effective? Seems like ~2 weeks or so?

I also have (sitting at home) some Jungle Ich cure tablets. Contains one of the something or other "green" meds as well as a multicure called "Clout" that list Ich as #1 on the list. I have coppersafe in the cabinet as well, but I had a fish get kidney failure one time after I used that stuff.

Trying to figure out:

1- Should I should continue down the salt path

2- Are my salt numbers correct

3- How long salt would need to be in there

4- Should I switch to meds

5- Which med

6- Do I need to get the salt out before using a med

Thanks.

Answer 1

I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say you cross posted on Koko's? (Is looking at Koko's atm).  Those pictures don't look like Ich. It could be Columnaris, which looks like a fungus but is actually a bacteria. Maracyn treats that. Or it is a fungi and you'll need Pimafix. But yeah. If that is you on Koko's, it isn't Ich. Ich looks more like salt grains.

1. Salt won't help fungus

2. .3 salinity is the medicinal amount, supposed to be achieved over 36 hours. Every 12 hours add dissolved salt.

3. That I don't know

4. I never trusted salt for something like Ich, plus I can't use it with the other types of fish in my tank.

5. Malachite green or Coppersafe

6. Salt can actually help the medication.