How to treat WHITE SPOT / Curing ICK (ICH) in an aquarium by Pondguru

Hello there, I'm Richard from Tyne Valley Aquatics and in this video I'm going to talk about Whitespot or Ick as it's commonly known. Now this parasite is quite common in freshwater aquariums and this is its proper name, hence being shortened to Ick because I can't say that. Ichthy is something or other. Ick, easy as that. This sort of parasite generally manifests itself in your tank. When the fish are stressed, water conditions aren't too good, or you've added fish from a place that's not too healthy, and the parasite comes in with the water, whilst the fish may look fine, they're in the water, they breed infect the fish. Now I think it's probably quite important at this point to actually show you either a video or a photo of what white spot looks like. Unfortunately, or in fact fortunately, if you're buying fish from here, we don't actually have any fish showing signs of white spot. So you're going to have to make do with this. Really all you're looking for is things like the fish breathing more heavily, sitting listless on the bottom, showing little white spots on the body and fin, almost like it's being dusted with sugar or salt. And if you can catch it when you just see a few little spots on the fish, that's the time to treat it easily, reasonably cheaply and effectively. And actually, mentioning the fact that all of our tanks are individually filtered, to us that's really important. If we do get a problem, say, in this tank, white spot or whatever, fungus, bacteria, whatever, it's confined to that tank. In a lot of places, you get a whole bank of tanks all linked to a sump in the bottom. You may have some poorly fish up here. But the folks would still quite happily sell you fish from here, here, here, here, here, here. That one would be under treatment, but all these fish would be in the same water. You buy fish from any of these other tanks, and you're taking home problems. In a shop with individually filtered tanks, and there are a few of them, most of the independent places will have individually filtered tanks because they tend to know a little bit more about the fish. If you have poorly fish here, you can buy them from here, here, without any problems. And added to that, we also have separate nets for all the tanks. So fish health is pretty important. Again, white spot is something that is more easily prevented than treated. If the problem persists to the point whereby fins start to become eroded, Colour starts to go milky on the fish, then quite often the fish are knackered, so early treatment is the key. So you've noticed a few little spots on the fish, what can you do? First thing, and this is assuming it's a tropical tank and not a cold water tank, assuming it's a tropical tank, turn the temperature up to above 26 degrees, maybe make it 27, possibly 28 if you've got Amazonian fish. Check what the water parameters are like for your fish because some of them might not like that high temperature. What raising the temperature does is it speeds the life cycle of the parasite up. So ordinarily, at about 25 degrees, the entire life cycle of the parasite would be about 7 days. And that life cycle can increase to nearly 8 weeks if it's a pond. And the water is much colder. So raising the temperature speeds up the life cycle of this parasite and it makes it easier to treat. It makes it a lot quicker to treat and quickness is the key. You can add a little bit of tonic salts, use the manufacturer's guide as to how much to put in. And this will aid the fish breathing so they can get better oxygen transfer and it will also help to heal up any damage that the fish has done to itself whilst it's been stressed and scraping on the bottom of the tank. So there are two basic ways to aid the fish and also speed up the life cycle of this parasite. But you will actually need to treat it as well to kill the parasite. Some places will have maybe a dozen different treatments for white spot. I'll run through two or three. There's three common ones there. I'm sure they'll have these on both sides of the Atlantic. One from Waterlife, King British and Interpet. Out of all of these, this one is probably the best for convenience, WS3, because you treat every other day, good for people with bad memories like me, but I think from the angle of actually doing the best job, ProtoZon from Waterlife. That's the best one I've found because it not only treats the parasite, it treats other parasites as well which may have hitched a ride on the fish. So you're not just treating for one specific thing. It also covers you for Neon Tetra disease as well. Velvet. And fungus. And given that when fish have parasites, they do get stressed, they do injure themselves, they have bacteria, fungus, to be able to treat for fungus is a bonus. That kind of does it all, and it does it well. One more thing to note is, if you catch it early enough, you'll probably notice that the white spots disappear more or less overnight. Continue the course of treatment as per the manufacturer's recommendations to ensure that you kill... The white spot parasite that will be in your tank, in the gravel, in the sand, and also still on the fish. Now another thing to do is also increase the aeration in your tank. See that little filter behind me there? We've got an airline coming in the top of it, so as it's spitting water out, it's sucking air in. It's breaking up the surface of the water, it's increasing transfer of gases between the water and the atmosphere. Possibly one of the most important things, apart from buying fish, From a good supplier, where there's not dead fish lying around all over the place, is feeding the fish well. Give them a good, balanced diet. This is one of the best foods that I've found in recent years. It's from New Life, Spectrum. This is a community food, but you can get cichlid food, you can get all sorts of different foods, and it's excellent food, really packed with proper ingredients, it's excellent food, reasonably expensive, but it enhances the colour of the fish, and it also contains garlic, and in a similar way to when we've eaten garlic, the next day you can smell garlic on you, it sweats out, exactly the same happens with fish. Fish eats the food, which contains garlic, and it sweats it out. The parasites don't like that at all. So this good quality food, combined with good maintenance and good filtration, can actually prevent white spot. It is a disease that's more easily prevented than treated. And you can even get first aid food. That's another one from New Life Spectrum. Thera Plus E It contains loads of garlic and if you feed this to your fish with white spot they'll sweat it off a hell of a lot quicker. That's it, I've briefly run through how to treat white spot and also how to prevent it. Any further questions just stick them in the comments box below or call the shop. Thanks for watching. Hiya, you alright? No, I'll just switch this off. Just videoing. Just give us a shout if you need a hand. Right, fine. Pizzas!