The Heartbreak of Ick

Went downstairs to feed this fish tonight, as is my habit, and noticed that one of my golden spotted tetras has come down with a pretty serious case of "ick," or "white spot disease." The scientific name for this, for all you gearheads out there, is Ichthyophthirius multifiliis, which, translated, means "ick."

With only ten minutes until closing, I rushed out to the new Target store on the other side of 164th Avenue from us. I got in the doors just as they were announcing that the store was closing. I made my way to the back, where the pet supplies are, grabbed a bottle of Ick medicine, and made my way to the checkout stand. My debit card was approved just as the lights were being shut down across the store. I hoofed it out of there, jumped back in my truck and proceeded home.

Once here, I then read the back of the bottle. "Do not use on non-scaly animals or tetras," it read.

Well, I'll be.

Our tank, see, is populated by the following: two tetras, two snails, one algae-eating funkyfish (can't remember what it's really called), and two junk fish called Oscars, that are apparently the piscine equivalent of cockroaches - they can tolerate just about any kind of water conditions, so long as there actually *is* water. What this means, friends n' neighbors, is that for roughly 50% of my aquarium's population, the medicine that heals is the poison that kills.

Determination, however, can lead one to do strange things, and I was determined to a) rid my tetra of his ick (can't bear the thought of anything having to die of something so ridiculously named) and b) not think my 10:00 PM jaunt to Target (and $2.09 expenditure) were all for naught. So, I grabbed the nearest glass container of any size, which happened to be one of Katrina's flower vases, filled it with room temperature water, opened the bottle of ick meds, placed the lid on the tile counter, poured barely 1/8 of a teaspoon out, and dumped it in the flower vase.

Ick medicine, if you don't know, is made of the same blue dye that they use in those money packets at the bank - you know, the ones that explode if you try to rob the place, coating the money (and you) with indelible blue dye, making you either bank robbery suspect #1 or the latest addition to the Blue Man Group.

This stuff doesn't come off.

We have SOLID, SEALED STONE TILE COUNTERTOPS. *Nothing* stains them. Nothing, that is, except for the wonder that is ick medicine. The spot where I placed the cap had a small ring of blue under it. I grabbed a paper towel from the rack to blot it up. The towel turned blue where the liquid touched it.

The tile, however, remained blue where the liquid had touched *it.*

Sensing a problem (busted husband radar slowly pinging in the back of my brain), I reached for the closest cleaner of mass destruction within my reach: the SoftSoap dispenser. I squirted a glob of liquid hand soap onto the blue spot, then began rubbing it with a clean spot of paper towel.

No dice.

Busted husband radar now pinging uncomfortably loudly.

Meanwhile, I noticed that the blue dye of death (as I'd begun to think of it) had also dripped onto our white sink, which I know for a fact is semi-porous. Realizing I was facing a life-and-death situation (my own, once Katrina saw her sink and countertop), I dug through the dirty dishes for the ScotchBrite scouring pad and my favorite stain killer, Formula 409.

409 didn't do jack for the blue stain of death.

And, at this point, my mental radarman has thrown off his headphones and donned his lifejacket.

Getting nervous, I busted out the big guns: the Comet. If Comet wouldn't take the stain off, I would at least be able to buff down through several microscopic layers of the actual tile and sink materials, and hopefully Katrina wouldn't notice the rather rough, dull spots left by this operation.

Thankfully, Comet did the trick, and I'm still breathing.

Now, on to the fish. I got my trusty net, caught the ick-y guy, and dumped him in the flower vase with its eerie blue water. I'm figuring that, what with the relatively low level of concentration of ick medicine in the water, it should either clear the infection right up, or it'll fry the skin right off his little bones.

We'll see in the morning.