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re:Ich, & quinine (& malachite too...)

>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?

I'd personally be more worried that the copper in the malachite green would 
affect your plants.  I used quinine sulfate way back when I was just getting 
started, and found it to be a good cure for ich though.  I haven't used it with 
plants.  I have used "Maracide (TM)" in my big tank when I had a widespread 
outbreak of ich.  It's an aniline green mixture that didn't negatively affect 
my plants as far as I could tell.  I also raised the tank temperature to 84F 
from 82F.  The ich was gone in four days.  It didn't negatively affect my 
cardinals or my cory either, as far as I could tell.  Note:  One bottle of 
Maracide is only enough for a 35 gallon tank.  

>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.

If you have a sponge in your big tank, use it for part of the bio-filter on the 
quarantine tank.  If your big tank is heavily planted, you probably don't need 
much of a bio-filter.  For peace of mind, replace the sponge from the big tank 
with another one.  If you don't have a sponge, you might be able to use a few 
handfuls of stem plants to help start the nitrogen reduction.  If you use 
plants, supplemental CO2 might help them out.

Just thoughts, really.  I wound up using the Maracide in my main tank and 
didn't have any problems.

David W. Webb
Enterprise Computing Provisioning
Texas Instruments Inc. Dallas, TX USA
(214) 575-3443 (voice)  MSGID:       DAWB
(214) 575-4853 (fax)    Internet:    dwebb at ti_com
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