varanio;1820047; said:
Pimples on the scales, right, Alex. Everything disappeared but let us wait and see...after a lot of sorting things over, I felt more inclined to believe that the pimples were bacterial colonies...they start smallish, then they grow somewhat, react to the bassler formula ( malachite green, a hint of copper, methylene blue and formaldeyde ) but did not disappear entirely and suddendly started appearing on the aro's other side. In exactly the same place in the other side.
So I did what I started out refusing to do on acount of the sheer size of that monster ( which was taking her out of the tank ) and gave her a potassium permanganate bath.
Prepared a container with an airstone, put 100 litres of tank water in it, in went the aro, then quickly dissolved 500 milligrams of potassium permanganate in a bit of water and threw the mixture into the container.
Counted 27 minutes untill the aro started showing some degree of discomfort , picked her up with a towel ( because you don't want the potassium permanganate water in the tank, let the aro drip a little bit and put her back in the tank.
She is clean, for the time being.
But be advised that when giving such a bath one has to pay very close atention to the fish. One bit too much and they may die or get severe gill injury. On no account, so I understand, can such a bath take more than 50-60 minutes.
