# Best way to treat Ich with plants, shrimp, and snails?



## Betta Maniac

Personally, I'd pull all the plants out, treat the main tank with heat and salt, and then rescape when the ich was gone.


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## heydude819

When I had ich in my 40 breeder, I slowly increased the temperature by one or two degrees each day until I was at the upper 80s. The temperature remained around 88 degrees for about 4 weeks and I had no casualties with fish or plants. I think that if you slowly increase the temperature, you should be fine.


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## sonic99

No salt? The heat alone will be enough to kill the Ich?


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## Darkblade48

sonic99 said:


> No salt? The heat alone will be enough to kill the Ich?


Yes, heat alone is sufficient to kill Ich.


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## caall99

I would say copper, worked fantastic for me. Double the recommended dose of chelated copper such as Copper Safe. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend it to the OP due to his large shrimp colony.

On the other hand, the OP could remove the shrimp (or most of them at least). Treat with copper intensely for 3 weeks. Do 50% water change every day of the 4th week. Then run carbon the 5th week and use NovAqua to drop the copper out of suspension, and make any remaining traces inert. 6th week reintroduce shrimp and hope there are no copper traces left to hurt them. Keep using NovAqua as your water conditioner.

Copper has worked sooooo well for me, even in the worst Ich outbreak situations. The plants even flourished while i dosed the copper. Ever since i stopped dosing copper the plants aren't doing as well.


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## caall99

Darkblade48 said:


> Yes, heat alone is sufficient to kill Ich.


Heat alone at like 87 F did nothing for my Ich outbreak except make it worse. I had kept the heat that high for 2 weeks, even while dosing Aquarisol, and i saw ZERO improvement. Actually things got dramatically worse. Hence i went the "double dosing CopperSafe" route, and everything got much much better in a matter of 3 days or so. Eventually every bit of Ich was destroyed and haven't had a problem since. Fish never seemed to mind the copper.

I believe i had an extremely heat resistant strain of Ich.


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## msjinkzd

The best recommendation is to remove the invertebrates to treat. I would use heat and salt. My experience is that typically plants survive the duration needed for treatment. While your shrimp and snails will survive heat and salt, it will be very stressful.

If you choose a chemical alternative, its safest to remove your invertebrates.


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## Mxx

I started experiencing an Ich outbreak in my small planted tank. I scoured the internet for the best cures, but all the medicinal ones seemed to have significant side effects. Then I ready many good reports of using simply heat. So I turned my heater up all the way, (86 degrees), and a few days later I saw no signs of Ich on the fish. I left the heat on that way for two weeks to make sure to kill the Ich, and the plants and the fish never seemed to suffer any ill results whatsoever. I didn't want any residual salt,r chemicals, or anything else in my tank, so this had certainly worked perfectly for me.


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## caall99

Mxx said:


> I started experiencing an Ich outbreak in my small planted tank. I scoured the internet for the best cures, but all the medicinal ones seemed to have significant side effects. Then I ready many good reports of using simply heat. So I turned my heater up all the way, (86 degrees), and a few days later I saw no signs of Ich on the fish. I left the heat on that way for two weeks to make sure to kill the Ich, and the plants and the fish never seemed to suffer any ill results whatsoever. I didn't want any residual salt,r chemicals, or anything else in my tank, so this had certainly worked perfectly for me.


Of course this only has a positive outcome if you do not have a heat resistant strain. In my case the additional heat blew my infection out of control. All my fish became solidly peppered with the parasite within days! Again, the heat resistant strain I hear is more rare than common, so it wouldn't hurt to at least just try heat.


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## MissGreen08

I also treated with high temps as suggested by the members in the forum. I increased the temp by 2-3 degrees every day until the temp was about 86 and left it there for a week and a half to be safe. No ill effects to my plants as they continued to grow like crazy!


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## sonic99

Thanks so much everyone. I will try heat alone at first and see what happens.... If it looks like it is getting worse I guess I will do my best to gather up the shrimp and snails and medicate the tank. Thanks again!
-Ryan


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## Mearpond

I know this is a very old topic but I was wondering what the results of truing up the heat did for your ich?


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## soc200

Mearpond said:


> I know this is a very old topic but I was wondering what the results of truing up the heat did for your ich?


I recently did 87 degrees for 10 days. The ich was visibly worse for several days and then gone shortly after that. I left the heat up for another week to ensure all of the ich was gone. A month later, I am ich free. I lost 2 of 12 fish in that tank. These results are as good or better than any other treatment I've tried...and faster. Total treatment time was about 2 weeks. Plants didn't mind at all :grin2:


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