# Quinine Sulfate, Ich treatment for loaches?



## lauraleellbp (Feb 3, 2008)

I haven't used that one, but with scaleless fish/catfish I generally use 1/2 the standard dosage of ich med and treat for 2x as long. Raised temperatures really help.


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## Diana (Jan 14, 2010)

Rid Ich dosed as follows is safe for Loaches:
Figure out the total daily dose. Now cut that to 75%. Now cut that in half again (roughly 37% of the daily dose), and dose that once in AM, once in PM. 

Rid Ich degrades through the course of the day (most meds do). Dosing it all at one time means a bit of an overdose at that time, so that as it degrades it does not become too weak to be effective. Dosing twice a day keeps the maximum dose a bit lower, yet also does not allow it to drop so low that Ich survives. 

Deep and thorough gravel vacuuming (if there is gravel in the Q-tank) will help in several ways. Many medicines will use up some of their effectiveness attacking organic wastes in the tank. Remove all fallen food, fish waste and similar things often. Vacuuming also removes fallen Ich organisms. You will never get them all, but fewer to reproduce does mean fewer to re-infest the fish. Daily vacuuming at higher temps (in the 80s) is optimum. It is not about the volume or % of the water change, it is about how thorough the vacuuming is. 

Ultra Violet sterilizer is particularly useful in a fairly empty Q-tank, there are less things to interrupt the water movement, so you are more sure all the tank water is actually flowing through the sterilizer frequently enough to kill the Ich babies. Just do a little research to be sure the medicine you use is not light sensitive. If the package suggests turning out the tank light, then the UV may degrade the medicine faster. UV can be combined with salt.


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## neumahrs (Jan 12, 2010)

Only loaches I ever had get ick were juvenile clown loaches and malachite green didn't bother them at all. I used half dose split for 2x dosing for a few days and the ick went away. Diana had a good point. Medication tends to lose effectiveness pretty quick so splitting your doses up for morning and evening is the best way.

EDIT: Some places suggest adding salt to the water.....don't do that, loaches really do not like salt and will just make them worse.


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## SubWolf (Jul 13, 2009)

For anyone that is interested I ended up dosing with Quinine Sulfate for 5 days (with 25% daily water changes as recommended) and it seems to have worked great. It did not stain everything like the Malachite Green does, and it did not seem to stress the fish or damage the plants in the least (We have a couple Wisteria in the QT tank).

Might be a good drug to keep on hand for any of you who have loaches.


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