My daughter's two goldfish came down with a severe case of ich. My wife had purchased a pleco two weeks ago while I was gone for the weekend and added it and the lfs water to the tank. long story short, I'm in the process of treating both the fish and the tank.

Initially, the one website i used as a guide said to use 1 cup rock salt /gal for the dip. well, that proved to be way to hard on the fish. the first fish stopped breathing and moving altogether within 15 seconds. I removed it into the hosp. tank and added another 3/4 gallon of water to the dip which worked much better. this time, although it floated on it's side for the most part, it never stopped breathing and would go upright and swim for a few seconds periodically over the course of the 3 1/2 min. they both seem to be hanging in there for the time being.

I've also started the process of treating the daily tank with SW and high temp for the next week or two. My question is though, does the saltwater dip need to be repeated over a few days or is once enough? I would assume since the tank needs to be treated for some time that the fish would need to undergo a few dip treatments.

Any advice is appreciated.

Well, goldfish need to be in coldwater, they might be shocked from raising the temperature too quickly.

I've never had to deal with ick.. so not sure if the rock salt was the problem. Maybe using a different salt will help?

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IMHO, non-medicated methods are just too difficult for goldfish since it usually calls for high temp. Get some Quick Cure. Spots will be gone in 3 days. Follow the instructions and you'll be good.

jrman83 is CORRECT! heating the tank water into the mid to lower 80s will speed up the Ich life cycle but salt doesn't kill the Protozoa like the stuff in Quick Cure does and it is probably going to kill your gold fish before it does anything else.
Get some Quick Cure. Follow the instructions and you'll be good.
Another thing, the entire tank the fish were in needs to be treated not just a set aside hosp. tank
Charles H

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27 to 35 tanks from 5 to 55 gallon fresh water tanks. 300 to 350 gal in all.
Spawning mostly Killies, Live bearers, American & west African Cichlids, Pencil fish. 4 species of spawning Corydoras, & some Bristle nose Plecos. Other less than 6 inch species from time to time.

In St. Louis
Change As Much Water As Often As You Can

I third the quick cure.Its a great medication.Best thing to use when you cant do a temp raise and add salt,in which case,goldies do not like.

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"Come to the dark side....we have cookies...and filters/heaters/and water changes!"

OK, will pick some of that up tomorrow. I am treating the daily tank with salt and high temp ATM. Everything I have read says salt will kill the parasite, both on the fish and for the tank, although I know I need to take that with a grain of....um...salt.

Right now they both (fish) seem to be doing ok. They are swimming around and eating, although not like they should be, but better than yesterday.

Thanks for the replies and advice!

So here's a link to heat treating... For reference.
Using Heat to Treat Ich in Freshwater Tropical Fish - Article at The Age of Aquariums - Tropical Fish
But as jrman suggested heat treat for gold fish is not a good option. You can do highly concentrated salt baths of tank temp water. Rock salt is the same as "aquarium salt".
And salt is one if the only things that will affect and kill the Trophozite in the visible stage. It kills it through osmosis and the high salt concentration. It dies indeed affect it at others stages of it's life cycle.
You can pull the fish out of the tank, and raise the temp for a week to kill/clean your tank. Let the temp return, and re-introduce the goldfish.
Or dose the tank chemically.
I have treated fancy goldfish in the past with heat and didn't have any losses. But I may have been lucky? I've always had a loss using chemicals.

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"Buddha in your tank"

use uniodized salt in the water, i use 1 table spoon for every 10 gallons and it clears up the ich.. make sure you chage 10-20 % of the water every week... hope this helps!