Don't panic! Ich is one of the only parasites that can still be killed with salt. But since you've already added a chemical, we need to make sure that it is compatible with salt before adding any. Salt your pond to .6%. That is 5 pounds of salt per 100 gallons. Leave the salt levels up for 14 days and you are done. What is the name of the chemical you added and how much did you add? How many gallons is your pond?

Cindy

I bought a product called Rid Ich for pond fish from PetSmart (can't remember the chemical content tho) and the guy there recommended it for ponds with plants. I have too many plants to remove and some of them are in very large HEAVY planters I'd never get out of there. I don't want to kill off all the plants- then all the shade for the fish is gone. So I hesitated on the salt- also, everything I read said I'd need to heat the water when using salt.

My pond is 250 gals. So it's a manageable emergency I think. Just makes me mad......

that should work fine for you. Follow the directions on the bottle. You will probably need to re-treat a couple of times to get the ich in all of it's stages of life. Ich is one of those parasites that you can never get rid of completely. Most fish have very low levels of parasites all the time, but because of their immune systems the parasites are kept in check. But if the fish get stressed, the fish has to shift his system resources away from the immune system and over to Stress control. this leaves the fish open to parasite attacks. So whenever your fish undergo a period of stress, it's always a good idea to keep an eye on them for any signs of parasite activity. Ich is one of the easy ones to get rid of.