Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi,
I have noticed today that my Silvers have a nasty case of ICH. had not noticed it earlier due to water still a being bit brown from the media. I found a couple of floaters. Anyway I had given them a good salt bat before putting them in the system last weekend. They are only about 2-5cm long.

My question is now that I have ICH in my system, do i have to dump the water and clean the media somehow to get rid of it? As I don't want to infect any new fish later down the track.

I have started salting the system with about 3ppt just in case some of them can pull through.

As far as I know, ICH requires a host to infect. So as long as you treat all your fishes now and make sure they all recover for some time before introducing new fish you should be fine. Where did you get your silvers from??

Fishes also get more easily infected with diseases when they are stressed. So poor water quality, constantly moving around the top of the tank, either peeping on them, playing around with the system, etc will stress fish out, especially fishes introduces to a new environment.

Keep salt levels up to 3ppt and possibly a 6ppt to 10 ppt salt dip (10 to 30mins; watch how they react to the salt, if they look like they are surviving end the dip immediately) for the badly infected fishes might help.

If they're realy badly infected... look like lamingtons... then you need to go to 6ppt for at least a week... then drop back to 3ppt for another fortnight...

Anything over 3ppt for more than a fortnite will impact some plants, and new seedlings...

Fish "flashing"... rubbing their sides on the bottom, hence exposing their silver sides (flashing)... is a sure sign of "Ich" or some other irritation... and an indication that you should probably act straight away...

The ones I pulled out yesterday, almost white skin on the back half like some of the skin is missing. They are pretty small and hard to have a look at until they are floating.

I read in an article that ICH cysts can hang onto the roots of plants and spread later. Any one else now if this lasts long enough on plants to be a problem later.

I remember reading on this forum that increasing the temperature when highly salted helps get rid of ICH quicker - essentially it's only susceptible at certain stages of it's lifecycle, and when you increase the temperatures you increase the rate of their lifecycle.

I had a pleasant surprise, I must have miss counted the dead. Today 3 weeks after I thought all were gone I went to empty the tank to move whole system to better part of the yard. I found 8 happily swimming. Managed to get them relocated to inside tank and gave them a good dose of stress coat. They are pretty happy now.