Ich, & quinine

• To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
• Subject: Ich, & quinine
• From: Stephen.Pushak at saudan_HAC.COM
• Date: Fri, 13 Oct 95 2:34:39 PDT
• In-Reply-To: <199510121939.PAA03430 at looney_actwin.com>; from "Aquatic-Plants-Owner at actwin_com" at Oct 12, 95 3:39 pm
• Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85]

I've had a serious outbreak of ich. It's possible the problem was
caused by the introduction of a farlowella and ottocinclus last
Saturday and compounded by a 25% water change on Sunday. The new
water is cooler and drops the tank temperature from nominal 74o
to about 70 for a few hours. The farlowella was the first to
succumb on Wednesday followed today by all of the neon tetras.
This is a major bummer.

I have begun to raise the temperature today when it became obvious
that the problem was ich. I added Super Ich Plus at half the
nominal dosage which is recommended for neons. Super Ich Plus
contains Malachite Green and Quinine HCl; I used 11 drops for
the 49g tank. The "Handbook of Tropical Aquarium Fishes" by
Axelrod & Schultz recommends Quinine, Methylene Blue or Mepacrine HCl
but warn that Quinine salts "will affect some plants". The
Quinine dosage in Super-Ich-Plus appears to be much lower than
that recommended in the book. I don't have a hospital tank
setup although that might be possible in a few days. It will be
very hard to capture all of the fish.

Q1: Is it ok to treat the tank with plants as is? What are the
effects on plants of Quinine?

Q2: If a hospital tank is required; what is the "best" way to set
one up? I am concerned about ammonia and nitrite problems in
establishing a hospital tank.

Steve

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