Columnaris Help?

[Samanthaljay]

Happy Sunday!

I just wanted to start with saying I am a newbie and appreciate everyone’s advice! Any suggestions will be much appreciated and I love learning from all of you.

I have read practically every thread and comment containing to Columnaris and I am pretty sure that I am dealing with this in my tank. From the pinned post it is recommended to treat with Kanaplex and Furan together however when I went to my LFS they were completely sold out of Furan so I only bought the Kanaplex. My question is will I be okay to treat now using only the Kanaplex and then order the Furan on Amazon and start using that in a few days? Or should I wait and do both together at the same time? I had rapid deaths for about 5 days but my survivors have been going strong for the past few days so I am personally comfortable waiting if that is best. The magical healing powers of extra water changes I think is helping them but I obviously want to treat the tank if it is infected.

Also I currently have a very large Amazon Seord plant in the tank and am wondering how or if that will be affected at all by the treatments?

My tank is 29 gal, temp is typically right at 76 (was set at 78 but I read in the pinned post to turn it down to help with spreading) 7.4 ph, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, 5 ppm nitrates. I typically only do water changes on a sundays but lately have been doing 2 a week since I started having deaths.

If you need any other information let me know.

Thank you! -Sam

 

[Whitewolf]

Why do you have 0 nitrates? Any cycled tank should show some nitrates. Maybe your not taking the reading properly. If its API test kit, you have to really shake and wait 5 minutes for accurate nitrate reading

Columnaris is just bacteria, and there are actually lots of diffrent types of bacteria that can all cause the same symptoms.

How long has your tank been set up? Did you cycle with the current fish in it?
Kanamycin can kill the Benifical bacteria, since BB are gram negative as well. (a common misconception is that they are Gram +)

In any case, stongly reccomend against using kanamycin and furan 2 in the main tank.

There is always gonna be bacteria in a fish tank. The mindset of you have to "kill it" before it kills your fish is just not possible.
Another thing to do is look into getting antibiotic flake.

 

[Samanthaljay]

Maybe I am not reading it incorrectly sorry. I am not home at the moment to retest to verify but it has always been very low if not none. The tank has been set up since August. The fish in the tank were gradually added starting around the beginning of October. I honestly wish I would have found this forum prior to setting up my tank (it is my first tank) and I would have learned about a better way to do the set up and having a QT, possibly avoiding this occurrence all together but I suppose everything is a learning experience right? I will retest when I get home and post the results. Thank you!

 

[Samanthaljay]

Maybe I am not reading it correctly. It is definitely the yellow color so I’m not sure, sorry. I am not home at the moment to retest to verify but it has always been very low if not none. The tank has been set up since August. The fish in the tank were gradually added starting around the beginning of October. I honestly wish I would have found this forum prior to setting up my tank (it is my first tank) and I would have learned about a better way to do the set up and having a QT, possibly avoiding this occurrence all together but I suppose everything is a learning experience right? I will retest when I get home and post the results. Thank you!

Update: I just finished testing my water and my nitrates are at a 5 so I updated my original post