brand new comet has ich - surprise surprise

[benjamin100]

So my new fish has ich, and what looks like the early stages of fin rot- it would have been nice if the girl in the pet shop today had noticed/cared.

I've stuck a heater in the tank and i'm going to very slowly bring the temperature up.

I'm also going to start adding aquarium salt to the tank- but I'm not really sure how much, and also how to go about water changes, and how frequently to add the salt.

Would anybody be able to help, feeling pretty sorry for myself at the moment :(

[fish guy]

Is the salt aquarium salt if so it should say on the packet. Hope that helps a little

[Discusguru]

You can treat with wunder tonic or white spot cure.

Ron

[blueether]

I didn't see this when posted but I'll reply now for reference.

for ease of use 1ppt = 1g of salt per liter of water

I have had a goldfish in a tank with ich. I treated with both 3 or 6 ppt rock salt (3 or 6g per L). You don't need to raise the temp for goldfish and I would think that if you brought it up to the temps needed to halt ich it would also kill the goldfish. If you keep the temp at room temp them you will have to keep the treatment up for about 3 weeks, this will be a week or so after the last spots.

Mix up the rock salt in a 2 or 3 L bottle with hot water and slowly add this to the tank over a day.

Keep up water changes, and only replace the salt that has been removed ie if you remove 50 L of water them you will need to add back another 150g salt if you are treating at 3ppt or 300g of salt at 6ppt.

at the end of the treatment just keep up you water changes and the salt will slowly exit the system.

Most fish will cope with 3 ppt of salt, hardy fish can cope with 6 or more ppt. Cories, cats, pleco? are much less tolerant of salt and I believe that the mac for these species is only 1ppt.