The Aquarium Solutions/Hikari Ich X treatment contains malachite green chloride, which will dye the water inside of your fish tank blue. If you aren’t careful, this product may also stain some parts of your aquarium.
To see how you can prevent and fix Ich X staining issues, you can check out this guide from Aquarium Blueprints.
Quick Summary
While Ich X could stain your tank due to malachite green chloride, it most likely won’t be noticeable on darker objects. To quickly make stains less noticeable after you are done with treating your pet fish, you can do bigger and more frequent water changes in addition to adding some carbon media to your filtration system.
Unfortunately, the stains are more noticeable and harder to remove on silicone. For stained silicone tubing, we recommend completely replacing it. For silicone seams, you will need to remove the stained sealant and then apply a new sealant.
Will Ich X stain driftwood or wood?
While Ich X may stain your wood or driftwood, it may not be noticeable if you have a dark-colored branch. Over time the stain will slowly fade away.
Will Ich X stain your tank?
Aside from wood or driftwood, Ich X may also stain other parts of your tank. If the objects are already dark-colored to begin with, then you most likely won’t notice much difference, however. Even if you notice a slight stain, it should fade and become less noticeable after time.
While Ich X should not stain the glass or acrylic, it will most likely cause a noticeable stain to the silicone sealant and/or tubing. Since these silicone objects are transparent, the stains will stick out more.
How to prevent Ich X from staining your tank
In order to prevent Ich X from staining your tank, you can try taking the following precautionary measures:
1. Instead of adding Ich X directly in your fish tank, you can mix it first with tank water inside a water bucket or container. This will help dilute the blue dye, which should make it less likely to stain any objects in your tank. The more diluted Ich x is, the less likely it will cause stains to appear.
2. When adding the diluted Ich X to your aquarium, avoid putting it in close to the silicone seams, silicone tubing as well as other objects that you don’t want stained.
3, Make sure you follow the dosing instructions for Ich X as you need to dose 5 mL of the treatment for every 10 gallons or 38 liters that you tank can hold.
Before adding additional Ich X dosages, you need to do a water change of at least 33%.
By following these directions, you will be protected against any major staining issues.
If you managed to add too much Ich X in your aquarium, then you can take a look at this overdose troubleshooting article to see what you can do.
How to fix Ich X staining issues
In order to fix staining issues that came from using Ich X, you can try doing the following:
1. First off, we recommend that you complete the Ich X treatment as the health of your fish and other aquatic pets should be the top priority as opposed to how your tank looks.
2. Once you are done treating your fish tank with Ich X, the stains should fade away on most objects over time via water changes.
You can speed up this process by doing bigger and more frequent water changes. You can also add carbon in your filter to remove Ich X from your tank water.
3. While the stain will fade of silicone, it will still be really noticeable. If you don’t like the look, then you can simply replace the stained silicone tubing with a new one.
For the stained silicone sealant, you will need to completely break down your fish tank and move everything out of it. You can then use a razor blade to carefully remove the stained sealant. Afterwards, you can apply a new sealant on the seams.
If you are looking for a sealant that is safe for fish tanks, then we recommend checking out the Aqueon Aquarium Silicone Sealant, which you can find on Amazon with this link. (#CommissionsEarned)