When you are seeing white spots developing on your fishes as they swim inside your home aquariums, you know that it is already a sign of some parasitic infection developing inside your fish tank. Chances are that you are spot on in recognizing the problem, because your fishes are most probably infected with ick, a parasite that slowly feeds on your poor little fishes.
Identifying ick infection is very easy because frankly, they are very much recognizable as they attach to their fish hosts. They look like little grains of salt, attaching themselves mostly on the gills and fins of the fishes in your home aquariums. While you might not notice any great harm these white spots may do to your fishes, in actuality, they put stress on the fishes, making the animals erratic in swimming and scratching themselves continuously on many of the available surfaces inside your aquarium.
Ick parasites reproduce rapidly inside home aquariums and are transferred via the water only, contrary to popular belief that they may be transferred by air too. They swim freely inside the aquarium trying to find a host fish to attach themselves onto, however, this will only last for about 55 hours, and if they don’t find any host to infect, they quickly die, never to cause harm again.
When ick parasites find hosts though, they attach themselves to the fish for about 5 days or so. After this time period, they drop off the fish and into the substrate of your home aquariums where each ick multiplies to about a thousand more ick, ready to infect more fishes.
There are ways to combat ick infections, but may also cause harm to your fishes in the long run. I always suggest prevention rather than cure, so before you even think of tampering the water of your home aquariums, make sure that everything is ick-free and ready to be exposed to your fishes.