Help!!! One Fish Still Ill !!!! What Is This?!?!

Really concerned about this glowlight tetra!
If you know the history of my sick fish skip the next paragraph:

There is a seal of five, one of which had a bout of columnaris awhile back that I got wonderful help with saving his life but sadly not his pal. Once he was better we got him four new friends and after QT time they all joined happy and healthy... “-ish” it turned out. Some of them started to show what could have been signs of a new bloom of it. So another round with the meds and they all cleared up for the most part really except for one, though I’ve started a new round of meds just to be safe...

Sadly one seems to either be exceptionally resistant to it or has something else. I took a few pics while holding him up in the net so it’s really visible what is going on with him to someone who knows better than me. I’m so awfully worried because it’s on his head and his little fishy brain ain’t that deep in there ya know... so PLEASE! Anybody, any suggestions, anything at all, that might, could, or will help my poor little fishy friend who’s name is “Four” and hopefully is just as strong as the character lol!

I did give him a brush with very very very diluted down 1/1000th (an approximated guess) peroxide solution wetted cotton swab... I hope that helps him some...

Sort of Graphic (sad mostly) pics:

 

Racing1113
here’s the more visible pics

 

What are you treating the columnaris with?

 

Ohh ok I see it now. Sorry, I don’t get notifications of being tagged unless I choose “web view” from the app. The one who isn’t getting better - is he part of the original group or the new ones?

 

What are you treating the columnaris with?

Furan-2 and kanamycin

Racing1113 :it’s ok I didn’t really even know if it would work lol!
tokiodreamyunno if you’ve got notifications on or not but in case you do, any ideas or opinions on what it might be/is?

 

Furan-2 and kanamycin

Racing1113 :it’s ok I didn’t really even know if it would work lol!
tokiodreamyunno if you’ve got notifications on or not but in case you do, any ideas or opinions on what it might be/is?

That is about as heavy duty as you can get. Have you tried netting the fish and swabbing it with a Q-Tip dipped in methylene blue? Just a thought.

 

Hmmm unsure... but I'll tag a few who may know what this is.
TexasDomer Discusluv Aquaphobia

 

That is about as heavy duty as you can get. Have you tried netting the fish and swabbing it with a Q-Tip dipped in methylene blue? Just a thought.

No I did that with the peroxide (extremely diluted of course) but don’t have any methyl blue. I have two things with malachite green (tho it’s a blue color for whatever reason who knows) in them. One has formalin as the other ingredient (quICK Cure) and the other (ParaGuard) has a “proprietary blend” that is supposed to be as helpful but less stressful for the fish and safer for your tank ecology of BB etc. I could do a bath with either in a one gallon “hospital” or try the direct swab like you suggested to do with MB but using one of the MG if it’s safe to use that way? Would either of those work safely that way or in the bath and at what dilution strength would you do in order to do the swab? They both have the recommended strength for doing baths listed in the directions of the packaging/bottles and I’ve done bath with both (at separate times of course) before but again they both have MG not MB in them. Is there a particular brand of MB that seems to help the best that I should get if the MG can’t be used instead with the same effectiveness or health benefits that using something with the MB in it would?

Racing1113 Sorry forgot to reply that he is from the newest batch which had four of them in it. There’s only one out of the original two that survived from our initial purchase of that type of fish. Those two lived for about 5-6months before they got the columnaris and it killed the one who I only realized after they were sick had signs he had previously been infected and sick with it or something similar as his top fin was ragged and kinda like a floppy dog ear compared to his companion’s which was more like a straight standing up dog ear. I had thought before that it was a birth defect (like Willy the whale’s top fin) or possibly an old wound or injury from being bullied at some point which just didn’t heal the best...especially since he was bought in a group of four as well, two of which died early on, but he and the one still surviving one made it months before it caught up to the poor guy. *Sigh* Wish pet stores and fish breeders were more responsible and accountable for how they handle, breed, treat, and care for their fish.

Moving this section down separate because it’s not about the sick fish directly it related to my last statement about responsibility of fish (or really anything aquatic) care and quality so I just had kept typing and don’t want to censor myself but also don’t want to start a new thread right now or take attention off the sick guy too much either, which is why I don’t want to make a new thread for it either actually so I’ve moved it down here instead.
Speaking of pre-hobbyist care quality, I finally got some nice Java moss balls added to my “big” (I’m sure a 30gal is practically a nano to some here but I’ve got physical liabilities so it’s huge enough for me and it can comfortably accommodate enough little pretty fish to make me happy) tank, which I was hoping was the missing magic ingredient that I needed to get my cherries (and other colors) shrimp finally start getting berried and populating, but when I went looking for them after not seeing any in quite awhile except one who sadly was past though looked perfectly healthy still somehow if it wasn’t for the upside down and not moving part, and I could only find two shrimp (both red cherries...though one has so little red he looks practically like a ghost shrimp instead!) were all that was left of my small starter community! Even worse, I’m pretty sure they are both males so now I need to restock some... again. I am going to see if ordering from online, somewhere with good reviews and happy customers (I’d appreciate anyone’s recommendation for where, who, or what to look for in order to get ones that will start to breed a sustainable community) who’ve had successful pairings from that place etc, rather than go to the LPS or either of the LFS’ I’ve gotten them from before.

 

I'm with KimberlyG. Get some methylene blue and try that. It's really cheap and you should be able to find it in a farm supply place if not a pharmacy.

 

They have sinuses, and that is an internal infection of one. I have seen that before - it seems to eat away at the fish. I live in a no antibiotic without a prescription zone, which means my antibiotic knowledge is limited, but my old school remedy experience is right up there.
I don't see methelyne blue or any of our remedies getting that. You can try, because there are so many different bacteria that could be attacking the fish. Methelyne blue was used as a mouthwash for human gum infections at one time. That must have been blue tooth technology back then.
You can try.

The disease originates with very bad water conditions, crowding and pollution. it could have come in with the second batch of fish.

 

They have sinuses, and that is an internal infection of one. I have seen that before - it seems to eat away at the fish. I live in a no antibiotic without a prescription zone, which means my antibiotic knowledge is limited, but my old school remedy experience is right up there.
I don't see methelyne blue or any of our remedies getting that. You can try, because there are so many different bacteria that could be attacking the fish. Methelyne blue was used as a mouthwash for human gum infections at one time. That must have been blue tooth technology back then.
You can try.

The disease originates with very bad water conditions, crowding and pollution. it could have come in with the second batch of fish.

Ok I literally LOL’d at that joke! Which was good given the prognosis. I will continue to treat the whole tank with another round of the two antibiotics (kanamycin and furan-2) as they might help and will hopefully keep his friends all healthy in the interI'm while I also try giving him individual baths in Methylene Blue and/or direct swab with diluted solution. If he isn’t better by then I will probably have to isolate him to a bare bones hospital tank and approach it more aggressively... *sigh* good luck to my little Four! He’s gotta pull through for the rest of the gangs sake! Send love to all my GLTs! Katʁ, Vier, Four, Quattro, and Terry!

 

Good news and bad news...
The good is that Four’s head issue seems to have healed very nicely after only one direct application of diluted methylene blue and the second round of antibiotics. Also the rest of the fish appear to have no signs of columnaris or other diseases either.

The bad news...
The biggest and the two fish who had showed the least amount of columnaris infection, Katʁ and Vier, both died suddenly the day after the last treatment of medication!

As I hurt my knee/leg awhile back (turns out I have a couple hairline fractures on my tibia surface that holds the meniscus in place or something) I can’t spend as much time as I’d like cleaning, monitoring, and treating, the tanks water as I would normally like to and I believe that caught up with me and the poor fish. Even though I did all the recommended water changes and even changed close to 1/3 of the tank than 1/4 each time, it became highly toxic in its Nitrite levels and I believe that is what killed the two fish.
I’ve been doing daily water changes and exchanges (where instead of putting tap water into the 10 gallon directly I have taken the water out of my 30 gallon tank that except for having a little bit higher nitrate level, I believe due to most of my shrimpie slowly disappearing (and a couple just turning up expired out of nowhere) over the last couple months in there, the water is ideal. Then I refill the 30 gal with conditioned tap water. Our tap water usually tests with a teeny amount of ammonia, not even .25 on the scale, and I use prime in it but still this way I hope to replenish good water standard faster as well as encouraging the BB to grow back faster (yes I know most is in the sediment/filters not water, but it’s definitely not hurting the tanks) as well as being very careful that the transfer is one way only and that nothing that goes into or is touched by the QTs water ever comes into contact with the 30gal ever. It’s a slow process as that was a lot of medication and it will take awhile to get the tank cycled fully and well again but it’s a start and seems to be doing good and I think, and hope, that the three surviving GLTs will continue to endure till they are healthy long enough in a healthy tank that eventually they can finally join the rest of their fishy family in the 30.

And another sad note however is that we did lose a guppy that was in the 30gal but we believe it was do to both age and possibly some kind of stomach issue as he has looked possibly bloated for quite some time now (months actually) but never showed any other signs of sickness, nor did any of his guppy friends. He was at least a year or more old when we got him, maybe even closer to 2, and we’ve had him for a good 1/2-3/4 a year or so at least ourselves now, so the possibility it was just his time isn’t too great a leap to make. I do have some pics of him, as well as our three remaining guppies who all seem extremely happy and healthy, that I will post later (possibly in new thread) just so others can look at their profiles and tell me if there might be something going on with them that I’m not aware of which doesn’t create the classic signs of sickness and can happen even under good water conditions, just to ease my mind. Three fish gone in less than that amount of days is so hard, especially when my mobility and ability to are for sensitive tank issues is compromised as it is atm by my physical situation.

 

I'm sorry to hear. Do you use a water changer or are you still using buckets? I highly reccomend python! No lugging buckets and takes 10x less time and effort! That would take some strain off of your body if you're still using buckets.

 

So happy you found the methylene blue. It is a highly underrated treatment due to the staining effect. I'm sorry about your guppy. Keep us informed if things change.

 

I'm sorry to hear. Do you use a water changer or are you still using buckets? I highly reccomend python! No lugging buckets and takes 10x less time and effort! That would take some strain off of your body if you're still using buckets.

Wow! That looks like it would help a lot! Thanks so much for the recommendation I assume you just add however many drops/ml of prime or other conditioner directly into your tank after rather than adding it to prefilled and setting buckets? I ask since Prime says on the label that it’s best to add to the water before adding that to the fish tank but from what I’ve read it seems most people just put drops in directly anyways.
PS:if you have any light bar suggestions I’d like to know your opinion for that too I just haven’t gotten to finding the right forum section and posting about that yet, though ideally we want one with sunrise and set programm-ed/able functions tho....

KimberlyG Thank you for your sympathies... it was originally my young nephews fish but his mom was tired of the kids not taking proper care of them and leaving it all to fall on her so we took him, but not only do I dread the next time he visits when (slight if chance tho *crossing fingers* since he doesn’t come over much and is just a little kid)he notices him missing, but also he was one of the most unusual and pretty ”fancy” guppies I’ve seen so I had hoped to try to get him to breed but having what feels like never ending sickness in our other tank has rendered that impossible unless I want to set back up our five gallon as either the hospital tank or as a QT for new fish and/or selective breeding place where I can keep females and not have to have 3per each male of everything just to keep them from being nagged to death by the males lol. I’m hoping the store they got him from originally will have more like him but it’s so sad he was seeming just fine if possibly bloated, but he’d been like that so long by now that I thought he was maybe just a piggy eater which he did seem to be sometimes. It never looked like dropsy or anything of that nature and I did check for worms during the “autopsy” (if you can call it that but I had to know if the others were in immeadiate danger.... and there wasn’t really anything that I could see that was wrong. He was just fine one night on the filter intake the next noon. I think he hadn’t been dead long either cause he seemed sorta stiff (for a fish anyways), more so than say the GLTs that went the day before and other poor fish we’ve had pass before, when I first was taking him out and trying to look for why he mighta died.

I can’t tell if one of the three remaining GLTs has white stuff on his right gill or not so I used the MB diluted solution and applied it directly, or tried to anyways, but since it was so much harder to do on a gill than the one who I did on his head spot, I took the extra step of dipping him only as shallow as a standard net for 3seconds only into the dilution. I also did more water change adding in some tap but mostly water from the 30gal (after I tested it and made sure it had 0ammonia and nitrite levelsj and even removed and cleaned with hot water about 1/2 or 1/3 of the gravel because the ammonia and nitrite levels were dropping but not fast enough and from the rinse water color I’m sure it was the right thing as it cleared was harboring the antibiotics on the gravel to some extent which was probably killing off the good bacteria faster than I could transfer it or it could grow. I’ll keep you posted on them tho I hope this is the turning point and no more fishies get sick on me anymore for a looooong while. Also put up the guppy pics and get opinions on their “physiques” to see if they are in danger.

Thank you everyone for all the help and support and suggestions!

 

Wow! That looks like it would help a lot! Thanks so much for the recommendation I assume you just add however many drops/ml of prime or other conditioner directly into your tank after rather than adding it to prefilled and setting buckets? I ask since Prime says on the label that it’s best to add to the water before adding that to the fish tank but from what I’ve read it seems most people just put drops in directly anyways.
PS:if you have any light bar suggestions I’d like to know your opinion for that too I just haven’t gotten to finding the right forum section and posting about that yet, though ideally we want one with sunrise and set programm-ed/able functions tho....

KimberlyG Thank you for your sympathies... it was originally my young nephews fish but his mom was tired of the kids not taking proper care of them and leaving it all to fall on her so we took him, but not only do I dread the next time he visits when (slight if chance tho *crossing fingers* since he doesn’t come over much and is just a little kid)he notices him missing, but also he was one of the most unusual and pretty ”fancy” guppies I’ve seen so I had hoped to try to get him to breed but having what feels like never ending sickness in our other tank has rendered that impossible unless I want to set back up our five gallon as either the hospital tank or as a QT for new fish and/or selective breeding place where I can keep females and not have to have 3per each male of everything just to keep them from being nagged to death by the males lol. I’m hoping the store they got him from originally will have more like him but it’s so sad he was seeming just fine if possibly bloated, but he’d been like that so long by now that I thought he was maybe just a piggy eater which he did seem to be sometimes. It never looked like dropsy or anything of that nature and I did check for worms during the “autopsy” (if you can call it that but I had to know if the others were in immeadiate danger.... and there wasn’t really anything that I could see that was wrong. He was just fine one night on the filter intake the next noon. I think he hadn’t been dead long either cause he seemed sorta stiff (for a fish anyways), more so than say the GLTs that went the day before and other poor fish we’ve had pass before, when I first was taking him out and trying to look for why he mighta died.

I can’t tell if one of the three remaining GLTs has white stuff on his right gill or not so I used the MB diluted solution and applied it directly, or tried to anyways, but since it was so much harder to do on a gill than the one who I did on his head spot, I took the extra step of dipping him only as shallow as a standard net for 3seconds only into the dilution. I also did more water change adding in some tap but mostly water from the 30gal (after I tested it and made sure it had 0ammonia and nitrite levelsj and even removed and cleaned with hot water about 1/2 or 1/3 of the gravel because the ammonia and nitrite levels were dropping but not fast enough and from the rinse water color I’m sure it was the right thing as it cleared was harboring the antibiotics on the gravel to some extent which was probably killing off the good bacteria faster than I could transfer it or it could grow. I’ll keep you posted on them tho I hope this is the turning point and no more fishies get sick on me anymore for a looooong while. Also put up the guppy pics and get opinions on their “physiques” to see if they are in danger.

Thank you everyone for all the help and support and suggestions!

It helped me greatly! Especially with tanks over 20g!

So you hook it up to your sink faucet making sure the bottom of the connector is pulled down. Then turn your sink water on full blast (as long as it won't overflow your sink when the tap gets added). Put the siphon in the tank and start doing your normal siphon and substrate cleaning routine while the water gets sucked out. Simply remove the siphon when you want to stop taking out water. You can force all the water out of the tube by lifting up the end and working your way to the sink. Then this is when I readjust the water to be temp matching. Just stick a thermometer under the connector with the tap water still running out of it. Then I add prime to the tank before adding the water. Always add for the entire volume of the tank. I always go 1ml over because you can safely use 5x the dose of prime. I also bought the python hook so I wouldn't have to hold it at this stage. Place the siphon or hook into the tank and change the connector at the sink from down to up. Water will start flowing into your tank. Simply turn off the water, switch the connector back to down and remove the siphon/hook from your tank. Then work the water out of the hose like before. Tada! Done with no heavy lifting. I'll attach a photo of the hook:



I've been using meth blue dips on a neon tetra that has a white patch on her gill. I was too nervous to use a swab near that area so I do the dip as well. I do the same thing and keep them in the net. I've been doing a 8s dip. How long was it until you saw improvement on your other tetra on its head?

 

tokiodreamy The head spot on “Four” actually went away almost overnight after doing the swab of MB to it! I wasn’t sure at first because after swabbing it the spot turned the white blue and so it was pretty camouflaged into his coloring what with the black streaks they have on their heads over the bright orange “eyeshadow” as I call it lol. And it might have taken a couple days even but I couldn’t even pick him out in the tank after the first 24-48hrs max and when I inspected the three remaining guys after the surprising death of the two biggest ones (I can only assume they died because of their size they got more of the high nitrite/ammonia/other damaging factors into their systems as the 2nd round of antibiotics especially made keeping the water in good ranges, even with more frequent small water changes, really difficult to keep healthy while balancing the need to keep a certain amount of the medicines in the tank meaning I couldn’t just do a 50% any time the ammonia or nitrite would spike as I’d normally have done because then the medication would all be flushed out as well..) one of which is now a 3 time survivor (go Terry! Even with your funny but cute flat face you’re a true winner of a fish!) and another the one with the spot and the third the one that had the most apparent and the third the one that had the most obvious, and assumably the worst, case of the disease when it started, all three of which is kinda crazy that they were the ones to pull through so far and hopefully continue to do so as I struggle to get the tank back to safe and healthy levels with all hopefully cured fish. (Especially as my husband refuses to get any more GLTs now so if one or two go then whoever is left is going to adjust to life as the only one or two of the kind and maybe join up with the Glo tetras for their schooling needs... but I can’t argue as it seeems the stock available to us is all now so inbred or badly treated that most are likely to keep getting sick and/or dying and that’s just not what this hobby is supposed to be about!) Anyways, I was very surprised, and even caught and netted Four and Quattro both twice (because of the wounds he suffered during the first bought of sickness it’s not completely obvious especially in the school of five but it’s still pretty easy to identify which is Terry so there’s no confusing him with the others) to make sure I hadn’t just caught one of them over and over, yet even doing that I couldn’t find any sign or mar that would indicate where the patch had been on Four’s head! In fact the two are so hard to tell apart I had my husband help me to watch the one I released as I went after the next to be absolutely positive I looked at them both. But besides Four being a little bigger and Quattro having the more worrisome whitish coloring near his gills that sometimes looks like the beginning of columnaris infection again but at other times, and upon close inspection, looks more just like he has a kind of see through extra membrane piece that connects his small most forward fin(?) to his gill area and when it catches the light in certain ways appears a lot like the columnaris does when it’s on/in the gills of a fish. I’ll let you know how he is looking in the next day or two after this last swab that I did on Quattro’s gill area, just in case it was columnaris or something else bad. I wasn’t sure how well I really was able to swab it and I wasn’t sure what exactly the dilution was at that I used for the swab and that’s why when I decided that to be safe that he got the MB I’d do the dip I only did it for the 3 seconds. If I hadn’t already done a hopefully helpful and successful swab and/or had known exactly what the dilution rate was that I had used, I may have dipped him for longer, but since I didn’t I thought it prudent to play it safe rather than end up feeling even more directly responsible for potentially poisoning a fish to death as I feel about the other two of the quarteters.

Currently I’m still battling getting the water to become healthy again especially with worrisome nitrite levels... but hopefully that will improve faster as I realized I was confusing the dosage and therefore way underdosing the amount of Prime that you can use to rectify that. I also took out cleaned and replaced a good amount of the gravel so there shouldn’t be any, or least not nearly as much, leftover antibiotics in the substrate preventing the growth of the good BB, some of which I am hoping is getting transferred to the tank by using water from the bigger one which tests good. I also just got new filters (because the last one wouldn’t be good by now after how long they had to have no carbon during which I just used plain filter material and a old filter whose carbon I took out of it by cutting it open etc, plus I think my hub tossed it long ago lol) so although I had to put a fresh one in so the carbon could get to work on its detoxing, I am going to slide another one into the HOB of the 30 for a few days until it can get its own BB colony going and then I will swap it with the current one to hopefully reinforce and keep the water healthy as I hope it will be by then.

And I think we will be getting the python thingy very soon, so thank you muchly for showing me that. We just have to figure out which spout we can attach it to as the bathroom sink isn’t standard so I’m going to have to see if it will come off with pliers and what exactly it looks like under the spout screen and/or need to measure how long of a hose we might need if we have to attach it to the kitchen sink which is practically almost as far across the apartment from either of our tanks as they can be unless we had one of the tanks in the bedroom or office lol .