My fish are sick, here are the symptoms, what is it and why are the meds not working?

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Sammi C

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A friend and I just purchased a few fish from PetLand, and now two of them are ill. The fish consist of one white molly, and a neon swordtail. I noticed that the molly would sit in one place and just wiggle for a while, then later that the neon was doing the same. Then we noticed that they had a few white dots on them, very small, on the tail fins. The next day the molly had a growth on his head, and within a few hours the sword had developed up to three white dots. And we moved them to another tank to separate them from the rest. Now the dots have lessened and the fin is in shreds, and neither move much from the ground at all. We've been treating them with IckAway and Melafix, but it doesn't seem to be helping!
PLEASE HELP OUR FISH!
 
You've correctly diagnosed the problem as ich. But it can take up to 2 weeks for the fish to be cured. It doesn't matter if you have them in a different tank, if any of the spots were on your fish in the first tank, the parasites are probably in the water in that tank now, so the other fish may get it. You could move the fish back and treat them all together, or you can keep the ones you know have it in the tank they're in now, and just keep an eye on the others. If none of the other fish get ich in 2 weeks, then they're safe.

So just go ahead and keep using the medication you've got. You can turn up the heat on the tank too. The warmer water can help the fish get over this faster. The medication doesn't work when the spots are on the fish, you have to wait until they drop off into the water. That's why you don't see a difference right away, or it might look like it's getting worse.

One other thing here, neons don't have big scales like the molly and swordtail, so their more sensitive to the medication. You should only use 1/2 of the dose for them, it should tell you that in the directions. Since you have 2 tanks, maybe you could split the fish up into one tank that gets the full dose, and one that only gets half.

What you need to know about ich. http://www.badmanstropicalfish.com/forum/index.php/topic,1285.0.html
 
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