Ick and total water change

[meghan]

I have a tank that has been running for about a month now and I put a few large danios in about a week ago (found on here they are compatable with the newts that I will be adding later on). I now see they have what I'm sure is Ick. I did some searching on here and found a post about someone's axolot caught this particular disease but it but it was due to earthworms. Since I haven't put any newts in the tank yet and wont for awhile, I really hate to tear down the tank. Could I get away with treating the the fish with meds or should I tear down the tank anyways and steralize?

 

[edward]

Since you do not have any of the newts in there at this time, I would suggest raising the temperature to 84 F as this will speed the life cycle of the Ick up. This will also boost the immune response of the fish allowing them to start to resist the protozoal parasite. I would then raise the salinity of the tank to at least 3 ppm and possibly to 5 ppm to clear up the infection (this can then be readily removed through water changes). You can also use a commercial ick treatment at this time as there are no newts in there to be affected. Once the condition has cleared up, water changes and carbon filtration can be used to remove the last traces of medication.
To my knowledge ick is only found in aquatic organisms (almost exclusively fresh water fish) and I strongly doubt that earthworms were carriers (although I have read of a theory that brine shrimp (Artemia) could be a potential alternate host (but this was only a theory and not proven).

Ed