How do I safely get rid of ick?

Here's the deal..heavy planted tank, a dozen blacknose shiners, and a half dozen mud minnows.
The other day I noticed a couple of the shiners cratching..and upon closer inspection, I see a few of the dreaded white spots on their fins.
The mudminnows so far show no signs of ick.
I have a good "head" of snails, amphipods, and 6 amano(sorry..no scientific name) shrimp. I do NOT want to kill off the plants, shrimp, or snails...but the amphipods and other smaller stuff can easily be replaced.
So..any suggestions? It's not bad yet, but I want to head it off at the pass.

Here's the deal..heavy planted tank, a dozen blacknose shiners, and a half dozen mud minnows.
The other day I noticed a couple of the shiners cratching..and upon closer inspection, I see a few of the dreaded white spots on their fins.
The mudminnows so far show no signs of ick.
I have a good "head" of snails, amphipods, and 6 amano(sorry..no scientific name) shrimp. I do NOT want to kill off the plants, shrimp, or snails...but the amphipods and other smaller stuff can easily be replaced.
So..any suggestions? It's not bad yet, but I want to head it off at the pass.

raise temperature to 80 F

raise temperature to 80 F

Doing so as we speak, thanks!
How about salt.. I have alot of synthetic sea salt from my marine days...would a couple of tablespoons per 5 gallons or so help, or be dangerous to the fish/inverts?

You could try salt dips for the affected fish, using salt water that's marine strength or even a little bit higher. The theory is that a fish's osmoregulatory system is more robust than the ick's, so by playing a form of chicken the fish will live but not any external parasites. Keeping fish in the salt water for about a half hour usually works. The fish will be stressed, but the ick on the fish will be kaput (hopefully). The bigger problem is that your tank will still have early life stage ick floating around which will still be a threat; raising the tank temperature makes them develop faster, which might help.

You might have to choose between the fish dying or the plants and inverts dying. If the ick is far enough along you would need to use coppersafe to get rid of it, or let it run its course. I tried to let it run its course in my 29 recently and it killed my banded killifish, rosyside dace, mudminnow, tesselated darters, fantail darters, satinfin shiners, blacknose dace, and two other types of un IDed shiners. The only fish that lived were my bluespot sunfish and one shiner. Of course, coppersafe will kill your inverts and damage some types of plants.

The ick spread to my 75 somehow and I quickly decided to nuke it with coppersafe. Only one roanoake darter and one blackstripe topminnow died, but all snails died as well as my anachris (a blessing really). The java moss, java fern, anubias, and crypts did fine.

Good luck, and a word of advice that I should have listened to (Drewish is a smart man) get a quarantine tank. I have one now but its a little late for my sad and lonely 29.

I have raised the temp, and will put in salt now...If it comes to it, I'll nuke it, as the snails are replaceable. So are the shrimp for that matter...although who knows, maybe they will survive(they are a bit larger).
OK..had an old (sealed, so still good) bag of marine salt, so put in 5 heaping tablespoons(way past level!). It's a 40 gallon tank, with lots of stuff in it...so maybe 35 actual gallons of water. The water temp is now at about 81.5(and the heater is still running...I'll keep an eye on it). I will try to stabilize it at about 82.
The fish are not exhibiting any signs of stress, really, but I have noticed that they have become a bit more "nippy" with one another...no idea if this is just due to temp increase, slight stress due to the salt, or stress due to the parasites. Just in case, I slightly lowered the water level to create more surface agitation at the filter outlet in hopes of keeping the gas exchange maximized.
At this point...I don't think I can do anything else other then copper treat the tank, and if I EVER want to keep inverts again..that looks like it's just not an option:(
Wish me luck!
(edited to add content)

I have raised the temp, and will put in salt now...If it comes to it, I'll nuke it, as the snails are replaceable. So are the shrimp for that matter...although who knows, maybe they will survive(they are a bit larger).
OK..had an old (sealed, so still good) bag of marine salt, so put in 5 heaping tablespoons(way past level!). It's a 40 gallon tank, with lots of stuff in it...so maybe 35 actual gallons of water. The water temp is now at about 81.5(and the heater is still running...I'll keep an eye on it). I will try to stabilize it at about 82.
The fish are not exhibiting any signs of stress, really, but I have noticed that they have become a bit more "nippy" with one another...no idea if this is just due to temp increase, slight stress due to the salt, or stress due to the parasites. Just in case, I slightly lowered the water level to create more surface agitation at the filter outlet in hopes of keeping the gas exchange maximized.
At this point...I don't think I can do anything else other then copper treat the tank, and if I EVER want to keep inverts again..that looks like it's just not an option:(
Wish me luck!
(edited to add content)

Get a large plastic storage bin (cheap quarantine tank) put the fish in there with treatment and let the tank cycle through the ich with plants and other stuff intact.

Get a large plastic storage bin (cheap quarantine tank) put the fish in there with treatment and let the tank cycle through the ich with plants and other stuff intact.

That's the ideal, no doubt..but the tank is so heavily planted, and full of roots and things..that catching the fish at this point would require that I literally tear it down, and I have no desire at all to do that.
I have raised the temp to 82 degrees, and am going to shoot for the highest salt content I can get away with, without stressing the fish. From several boards..this appears to be about .05 or so. I'll take it up to that and monitor it for a couple of hours...if they start to stress, I'll dilute it down a bit. Apparently the heat is just to make the process faster(speeds up the metabolism of the ick parasites), so although I've been advised to take the temp to 86..I think that would really be pushing it with the shiners(the mudminnows would not bat an eye even at 90 plus degrees, and they can utilize atmospheric oxegen ...so I'm not worried about them from a heat or O2 level issue at all).
The plants..well..I'll just hope for the best with them. Some will no doubt suffer from the salt, but some will survive..and I have lakes full of freebies to replace the casualties if there are any.

If you want to be safe while getting rid of ick, you might want to wear a hard hat and steel-toed safety boots.

Any reason why you can't use malachite green or aniline green?

Any reason why you can't use malachite green or aniline green?

Not sure how the inverts in the tank will respond to those...every commercial product I found also contains other product, and two a one, they warn against using in tanks with shrimp or snails.
However...I've bumped the temps to 84, added a bit more salt..no signs of stress yet, I will give this a few days. I'd run the tank all the way to the "magic number" of 87..but my heater just can't seem push it over 83.
If they fish don't get better(or die!)...I will treat the tank with meds, and just re-populate with inverts after the fact if need be. I tried to catch the shrimp earlier..but they are like the fish, in the heavy plant growth, nearly impossible to run down with a net and not uproot everything...easier honestly to replace them if they cannot take the formaline that's the active ingredient in the stuff I bought.(still better IMO then copper!).

OK, here's a good one: UV sterlizers will kill the free swimming form of ich. If you happen to have one just laying around (or maybe you know a marine hobbyist), you can try it. You will need to slow down the flow rate, to something like 30-50% of the recommended rate (depending on the wattage). OK, wait a minute, here is detail: to kill ichthyophthirous, you need 23,000 microwatts per second per square centimeter. Remember also, that used UV bulbs lose power (something like 10% in 100 hours.) Thus, for a standard, new 8 watt unit, you generate 15,000 at 240 gallons per hour, so you want a flow rate of half or less. Or, daisy chain 2 units. I got these numbers from a July 1995 Tropical Fish Hobbyist article by Erik Johnson, DVM.

Or, ... can very fine (i.e., diatom) filters remove the free swimming ich parasites?

Thanks for all the help guys.
I have had to medicate...just did not have the money for the UV steralizer.
The temp and salt thing would no doubt work for tropicals..but the plants, and the shiners, were freaking out(plants had already turned pale, and were melting at the edges, the shiners were flipping around at the surface.
Did a 50 perent water change to get the salt content down, and lowered the temp to 80....and treated with quick cure(mix of Malachite Green and formaline).
So far..fish are happy, no apparent effect on inverts...won't know about the ick for a couple of days.

Well...who knows what worked..but..
I lost NO fish, and no inverts!
I did loose some plants..and looks like I'll loose a few more...but they can be replaced easily enough.
As of now..all of the fish are ick free, and healthy.
I would guess that the quick cure was the ticket.
I did another 50 percent water change today, and am going to make another 4 day treatment..just in case. I know that you have to make sure to kill every bit of it..so I assume I'll have one more (hopefully lighter) bout in a few days. If so..I'll run a third treatment. From what I read, as long as you do water changes, you can do this for the long haul.