Fish disease spreading - need help please. Video and pics.

[scarecrow1f9]

I have a 125g cichlid tank - 8.0PH, 5-10ppm nitrate, 0 nitrite, 0 ammonia. Temp is 84 at the moment, in addition to a salt dosing. The normal water temp is 78-ish. Substrate is aragonite. 55 gallon of wet/dry scrubbies - 30 gallon sump of submerged scrubbies, rena filstar XP4 for mechanical filtration.

Food: Hikari Gold and Hikari excel - mix.

Inhabitants are:

5 Acei - 2.5"-3"
5 yello lab - 2"-3"
3 Redfin haps - 2.5"
13 male haps and peacocks recently purchased from online distributor. All 2.5-3"


I received a shipment of 13 male haps and peacocks last week. All looked healthy upon arrival, and have done very well in the tank.

a week or so ago I noticed a hap was "vomiting". I mean that in the typical human sense - opening his mouth and spewing out a cloud of dust, which other fish would then peck at. He seemed (and seems) fine other than this, is very active and pretty, eats well. He just tended to spew a couple of hours after eating.

Earlier this week I noticed several of the fish were rubbing against rocks and such. It started getting progressively worse. I began treating with salt, and raised the water temperature as I suspected parasites.

I also began water changes of 25% every other day.

The flashing has gotten worse though, and yesterday I noticed a few of the Acei turning dark and swimming in place. They still ate, but other than that didn't move.

Yesterday evening, roughly 8 hours later, the same two fish look like this:

Picture quality is horrible. Notice the red/orange areas at the base of their top fins and the almost black coloring.

I have a video here as well :

http://youtu.be/v0i4_-_dK8k

I posted this on the cichlid forums and was mainly told it was an aggression issue. But now there is a third fish with the same thing starting, a yellow lab - with the orange/red at the base of his top fins. I have a hard time believing an aggressive fish is going around biting every fish in the same place.

The flashing is still going on, I have no idea if it's related or not.

I added the salt (1 tbsp per 10g) and raised the temp one day, and saw these changes the next. Could this be an adverse reaction to the salt? Or is the flashing all of them are doing a sign that they all have something.

Any help would be appreciated, I'm starting to panic a bit, as it seems apparent the first two infected ones arent going to make it. Thanks

 

[scarecrow1f9]

the orange/red areas are are looking white today

 

[scarecrow1f9]

Cleaned out my sump thoroughly and found two snails? Very small black snails. Never seen snails in one of my freshwater tanks. Don't imagine the two could be connected could they?

 

[squint]

My guess would be ich or flukes with a columnaris secondary infection. Salt and increased temperature don't work reliably anymore as ich has been developing resistance so I would stop those if I suspected they were stressing out the fish. Ich and flukes can both be treated with malachite green + formalin. If you could narrow it down to flukes then you could use praziquantel which is safer to use.

You'll also need an antibiotic to treat the bacterial infection. Columnaris is most susceptible to erythromycin (Maracyn I), oxytetracycline, and kanamycin. It's highly resistant to sulfamethoxazole so trimethoprim sulfa is not a good choice.

 

[squint]

I did more reading and it seems salt is still considered effective but high temperature is not.

 

[scarecrow1f9]

Good info - anyone know how often I should add the salt? I'm doing 25% water swaps daily, so I dont know when I re-add and if I use a full dose, half dose, etc. The white area (looks like raw, scaless skin) is spreading down from the fins to underneath the body. It is definitely some soft of spreading infection.

I'm guessing using malachite + formalin will kill the bio-filtraion? I could keep the wet/dry out of the loop for a few days, but won't letting the media dry out kill it anyway?

Another Acei turned dark today. The lab looks fine now. That's three definitely sick acei. They are still eating at least. I don't understand why it only seems to be affecting the mbuna, and not all the haps and peacocks.

Basically all the new fish are fine, but the old fish started getting sick upon adding the new ones : / .

Thanks again for the reseach - I will begin a good dose of malachite+formalin tomorrow, and probably kanamycin as it's an antibiotic I'm familiar with.

 

[squint]

Once you get the salt levels to where you want, just add back as much as required after a water change to restore the original salt levels. So you'd add a 25% dose after a 25% water change. I'd try to pre-mix the replacement water and salt and add them together or add both slowly if added separately to avoid osmotic stress on the fish.

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fa100

Under "Use of Other Chemicals", malachite green can affect the bio-filter at certain concentration levels. Salt appears to be safer for both the fish and bio-filter.

The secondary infection really sounds like columnaris. It can spread really, really fast but can be beaten if you quickly begin dosing an antibiotic it's susceptible to. I had an Oscar get chewed up in a fight and immediately put him in a hospital tank and administered antibiotics. The columnaris still made the entire rear half of one side look like a raw fillet before being antibiotics turned the tide. The fish survived but it got really bad before it got better.

The fish showing signs of columnaris are in more danger from that than whatever parasite initially caused the problem.

Table 3 lists the antibiotics columnaris is susceptible to:

http://www.cib.espol.edu.ec/Digipath/D_Papers/35450.pdf

Erythromycin, kanamycin, lincomycin, oxytetracycline, and streptomycin, etc. What's funny is that I have more than half of those antibiotics on hand...

 

[Kivstev]

Have had good luck with Potassium Permanganate baths followed up by Kanamycin treatment for Flex/Columnaris. If caught early, salt baths can work, too. I prefer PP in the form of Jungle Clear Water at 2x normal strength as a 1/2 hour bath. I've also found that some forms of Columnaris are impossible to treat if it goes systemic.

In any case, isolate those sick fish ASAP! IF it is Columnaris it is very contagious.

 

[scarecrow1f9]

I could not find kanamycin at the local fish store. I wound up using "rid ich plus" - a broad spectrum antibiotic consisting of formalin and malachite green. I used it at the recommended dosage for 5 days. Each day I did a 25% water change, then dosed them - as it suggested. It was a pain in the ass - as it was over Christmas break and did it around travel/family/etc.


The very first day one of the two badly infected fish died. The other quickly began getting better.

On day 3 I noticed a couple of others beginning to act funny. My OB got black spots and fins (maybe he was supposed to? He's a teenager. Happened in 1 day though). Continued medicine.

It's day 6 now, they got their last dose yesterday. One more died today (my otter point!) - he was one of the ones that began getting sick on day 3 of medication. The other got better.

I noticed two more beginning the symptoms today. Whatever it was, the formalin and malachite green cycle did not kill it.

Now I'm wondering, do I start the cycle over? Should I increase the dosage? Switch medications? Running out of options here. The fish that DID pull through just dont look the same anymore - top fins are torn up and they appear scarred down their bodies where the scales fell off.

This is what the two beginning symptoms today look like. Same ol symptoms:

White area behind top fin - that will spread down and across their body within 2-3 days. Sluggish behavior, slowly losing their appetites.

Could the bacteria/fungus be within all of that filter media? the 55 gallons of scrubbies? Should I sterilize them? I know that would kill my bio-layer, but I'm getting desperate. Thanks for any help.

 

[squint]

It really looks and sounds like a bacterial infection that won't be remedied by ich medications. The bacteria are ubiquitous and sterilizing the tank won't accomplish anything. You need antibiotics to treat the bacterial infection first. Then exterminate the ich from your tank. And you also want to improve water quality so their immune systems can fight off bacterial infections started in relatively small wounds.