Ich!

This poor little tropcial fish is in the hosptial!

While taking some pictures of our freshwater tropical fish today, I noticed one of the Long-finned Black Tetras had small white spots on his body, like someone had sprinkled him with salt.
The fish is a newcomer to our community fish tank, and never really looked all that good from day one. A quick check of the Internet for fish diseases helped me to realize that the poor little Tetra was suffering from the dreaded "Ich," short for Ichthyophthirius multifiliis. This is a fatal disease--if left untreated--caused by a single-celled parasite.

The picture above is our little sick Tetra in his "hospital tank" The hospital tank is a 2.5 gallon all-glass tank that I had on hand. Since there's no gravel in the tank, you can see the grain of the pine table that his tank is resting upon--he looks like he's floating in thin air!

This guy was treated with small dose of Mardel Maracide to kill the parasites, which it should do within 24 hours. However, I will keep the fish in the hospital for the next 14 days, just to MAKE SURE the ich is gone.

None of the other fish in the community tank seem to be infected, but I dropped in one tablet of Jungle "Ick Clear" just to make sure. Hopefully I caught the disease in time before it spreads to any of the other fish.