:'(
Sorry to report that I've lost 2 to my ick infestation. The first casualty was my 6 year old fantail-he was the most heavily infested, and then had fin rot on top of that. On Satuday morning he was jsut barely floating along and I took him out-he was barely alive, still lots of parasites on him, and his scales were just falling off. I put him in a bag of pond water and put him to sleep in the freezer.
I was very hopeful yesterday as everyone looked perkier. The 6 year old comet, who was the second one to show signs, seems a lot better. His tail looks much clearer, still some red veining however. Many less spots on the body than before (today looked even more clear). However, today I just went out to feed and one of the new watonai was belly-up. He had a few icks on his tail and I was thinking he would pull through, but no luck. I looked him over carefully and he did have some along the endge of his tail fins, but nothing like what the other two big guys had. I guess they were just too much for him. His gills looked clean though and no secondary infections that were obvious.
I really liked him too-he was mostly silver with some pretty bright red patterns on his back.
Koi looks good, comet looks a lot better and is eating well, second watonai appears hungry and completly uninfested-the third watonai I have not seen for a few days at least-he was the shyest one from the get-go and had not yet learned to come to hand-feeding before ICK, so I'm hoping he is lurking around the bottom and hasn't croaked.
So I have been treating continuously for 10 days with the 25% water changes done every 3 days as directed on the Quick Cure bottle. I was going with 3 oz but I cut back to 2 as the 3 ounce dose seemed hard on the smaller fish, espcailly the one that just died.. Today I'm due for a 25% water change if I want to continue the treatment.
I'm not sure what to do. Comet still definitely has a few spots on him. Should I keep on? How long is "too long?" I wonder if the treatment was part of the watonai's demise-every time I put the medicine in he seemed a little distressed, even after I cut back on the amount.