# Ich- how long should I keep high temperatures?



## reignOfFred (Jun 7, 2010)

i completely cured it at 87 with nothing extra added in eight days. thats really all I can tell you based on experience.

heat itself doesn't kill fish at these temps, it is suffacation from lack of oxygen due to heat. run an extra air stone or two and your fish can handle the heat without a problem. high heat speeds the metabolism and can shorten their life span, but only on a long term basis.


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## Cedany (Feb 26, 2011)

+1 on upping the surface agitation.

Alternatively, why do you want to do it naturally? If it is due to inverts, your biological filtration, plants, etc, there are some herbal remedies on the market. I had an ich attack in my community tank once, and I used Kordon's Herbal Ich Attack. That link provides a good rundown of what it is and what it does. It worked very well, I had no problems with shrimp or plants, and there were no casualties out of 15 fish. The fish were fine within about 4-5 days, but I believe I treated for about 10 days, if I remember properly. It is still good to use an elevated temp with the treatment to hasten the ich's life cycle into its free swimming stage, but it does not have to be so drastic. If you end up using it, the stuff smells like a sin, so be careful with that first experimental wiff. :icon_wink It's good stuff to keep around, I've used it for all of my new quarantined fish, and I have yet to lose a single fish since!


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## takadi (Dec 13, 2010)

Yea, actually that's the stuff I used a while back. It smells oddly like sauerkraut. I just don't want to spend all the time waiting for the extra chemicals to degrade and be filtered out, plus I don't want to spend the money either.

btw side question about quarantining. When you quarantine, do you run a filter or just a bubbler/powerhead? Also do you change the water afterwards or do you leave it there?


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## reignOfFred (Jun 7, 2010)

I keep a small empty tank in a closet and an extra internal filter in one of my tanks. If I need a quar/med tank I just fill up the empty tank from an aquarium and transfer over that filter.


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## meowfish (Jan 5, 2011)

reignOfFred said:


> i completely cured it at 87 with nothing extra added in eight days


Same here. A day to heat (a degree every few hours) and a day to cool, total 10 days. I added a nominal dose of aquarium salt but that simply helps the fish heal, it doesn't speed the cure.


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## takadi (Dec 13, 2010)

Right now I'm just having trouble getting it to the right temperature. The visitherm has this mechanism that turns it off when the heater gets too hot (well that's what I assume), so it took two days just for it to rise 8 degrees. Love marineland, but their heaters just suck


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## meowfish (Jan 5, 2011)

I had similar issues with my Stealth Pro units. They didn't heat the water enough so I had to borrow another heater which went up to 90F and used it as well.


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