# Disease ID



## kcoscia (Sep 2, 2013)

thanks


----------



## Diana K (Dec 20, 2007)

I have seen that in more than one fish. I do not know what it is, but it seems to go away when treated with antibiotics.


----------



## kcoscia (Sep 2, 2013)

what antibiotics did you use? i'm treating with pimafix right now and it seems to be improving a bit, but its an antifungal


----------



## Diana K (Dec 20, 2007)

Pimafix and Melafix are not very strong medicines. They are reasonable when the problem is still on the surface, exposed to the water. When the disease organisms have gone inside the fish then these 2 meds cannot help. They do not enter the fish's system. 
They will attach to most organic things in the tank, such as fallen food, fish poop and many other things. They work a lot better if the fish is in a bare bottom hospital tank. Nothing else for them to attach to but the disease organism. 
Many medicines are like that: best activity is when they are used in a hospital tank. 

I do not know what fish antibiotics are available to you, but something like Kanamycin can be added to the food, and that is likely to work. I have also had good results with triple sulfa, a very old medicine.


----------



## kcoscia (Sep 2, 2013)

Ahhh good to know. Thank you. They've gotten a little better, but I think I would like to get some medicine to really take care of it


----------



## Tetra-X (Sep 8, 2012)

I need help with an outbreak of Ich/White spot.

I have a 70 gallon planted aquarium thats been up and running for years, it had tetras in it. I added a couple of tetra from Petsmart and got a bad outbreak of White Spot. I'm treating with copper, Maracide brand. But it looks like all of the tetras are dead as of this morning. I still have Corys and Ottos. 

I will be buying more fish BUT I want to make sure the White Spot disease is completely out of the aquarium. I read at warmer temps it takes 2 weeks but for safety wait a month. 

Right now I have my CO2 and lights turned off as I don't want the plants to absorb the copper. I need advice for both eradication the disease, while not killing off my beautiful plants.


----------



## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

Raise the temperature to 85 it will usually kill the ich off without hurting the plants.

I wouldn't add medications.


----------



## Diana K (Dec 20, 2007)

Buy a quarantine tank. 
Keep new fish in there for a month or more and treat as needed before adding them to the main tank.


----------



## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

I've never been a fan of quarantine tanks. They seem to stress my fish out more than they help. A lot of people swear by them though. On top of that it seems that usually when a fish gets sick it doesn't make it, unless it has ich or something easy to cure.

When you set up a qt tank Diana do you have it constantly running or do you just set it up when you need it? Bare bottom or no? What about lighting and plants? Maybe I have issues because my qt tanks aren't properly setup.


----------



## Diana K (Dec 20, 2007)

QT-
When I had about 2 dozen 'main' tanks I kept a QT running all the time. 
Bare bottom, but on a dark surface. 
Plant trimmings tossed in so the fish had some hiding places, but if they got something incurable I could toss the plants and not feel I was wasting anything. 
A rock or three for the fish to hide near. I would rotate these rocks in and out of tanks so that disease or parasites were not transferred with the rocks. 
Water was changed when I bought new fish, then weekly or more often. 
The QT was in my well lit porch, with about 2 watts per gallon of T-8 or T-5 bulbs. I was not so much concerned that the plants would thrive, just that they were not dying. Actually the plants did pretty well. 
UV optional. 
I used different tanks for quarantine, depending on which tanks were available. Most of the time it was a 10 gallon. 

Basic system:
I never bought so many fish that cycling was a problem. I would move some bit of sponge or a bag of bio-noodles from an established tank and that was enough. 
Test water in bag. Make tank water match (GH, KH, TDS). Almost always this meant adding stuff because my tap water is fairly soft. Local stores may be on the same water system, but they top off more rather than do water changes, so the mineral level is almost always higher. One local store adds so much salt that I could have used my brackish water tank for quarantine :-(
Over the month or so the fish were in the QT, water changes would gradually alter the water so that by the time the fish were ready to move into the main tank they were in water that matched the main tank (GH, KH, TDS, and usually pH)
I would always treat for internal parasites. Other treatments would be only if some disease showed up. Once the medication was cleared from the tank I would restart the clock so the fish had to be a month in the tank with no medication. 

I think the best success was because I made the water chemistry match. Then there was no chemical shock added to the stress of capture and transport. The gradual change in water chemistry over a month or so allowed the fish metabolism to gradually change to suit. And I was always trying to keep the fish in the conditions that were pretty close to what they had evolved to live in. 

Basically I had a few each soft water tanks, hard water tanks and a brackish water tank. But most were community tanks with fish that thrived in my fairly soft tap water. 
Water changes were done with prepared water that either matched the tank, or was just a little bit different if I was trying to acclimate the fish to something different. Never a big change in parameters, even if I was doing a really large water change.


----------



## kcoscia (Sep 2, 2013)

To throw an update in here: medication failed but all fish are still living. Spots still there but that original fish seems to be healing? Hard to tell. Temp is up to 80s and clean water. I'm hoping that'll lead to the fish fixing themselves

Sent from my VS840 4G using Tapatalk


----------



## kcoscia (Sep 2, 2013)

and we're back. After melafix, pimafix and two courses of tripsulfa leading to no change (except negative) I'm trying something else. Note: none of the fish have died, which is weird but good so I'll take it

anyways this round I'm running 80 degrees, salt and tetra lifegaurd

any input? 
The symptoms are gray patches all over the body along with the bump on that one fish (see picture earlier posts) behavior is normal. At this point, I'm leaning towards external parasite.

I am having a weird ammonia spike in this tank but it is being handled with 2 50% prime water changes a week, so the ammonia is not the cause. They display no symptoms of ammonia poisoning.

Thanks everyone!


----------



## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

I think you'll have more luck with the salt.

Salt is pretty much the go to treatment for any sort of external issue.


----------

