Clo

Super cool, I watch her videos but somehow did see that one. Thanks for the tip!

Thanks seems awesome. Tell you what you have in your water!

Reading through the journal I think I try most of the same things. My Betta rarely flares, he doesn't glass surf so I never blocked the light on the side.. but I could try. There are tones of floaters so the light is pretty dim. Maybe should share a picture of the tank. Although since I changed everything in it twice not sure it's a tank problem

Hello thank you for sharing. I do believe that these Betta with long fin are not in the best health either. I won't get any one like that again, i just got another Betta a baby plakat samurai and seeing how well he swims make me sad for all the long fins ones out there. I use both leaves tea and direct pieces in the tank. I put a small piece of catalpa, jackfruit or mulberry leaf for my shrimps. They eat it in about 10days. So I don't really have decaying matter. I remove it once only the nerves are left and put a new one. I will look up that journal, thanks! Where can I find this polyfilter? Do you have a link for it? I think I'll try. For water change I use water that I prepare a week ahead and age with activated carbon and phosphate pad. It has allow me to significantly decrease the amount of silicate from my tab water and algae growth in my tank. My shrimp are also healthier since I do that. So I do think some things are harmful in my tab water. So maybe I'll use the polyfilter both in my aged water and in the tank.

Hello I am coming here to pick up some brain storming out of the specialist in fish diseases here.I have been having a lot of trouble with my Betta fish. I have him since a little over a year, bought him at Petco. He was already quit grown then so I estimate he is around a year and a half old. He has been only worries from day one! So I'll give a little background, but before I start I will put all the water parameters out of the way. I keep him in 14 gallons heavily planted, he has always been in cycled set up, even in the hospital tank I use a seasoned sponge filter. The way I set up my stocking vs plant I have constant nitrates levels and phosphate levels under detectable range so close to 0. I still do a weekly water change of about 15%. When I got my Betta, he showed signs of heavy constipation and fin rot. I treated him with the med trio and fed him kanaplex for 10days. Following that he was better for a month, then his fins started curling. I havr very hard water, I read it can cause fin curl. So I re-scaped the tank added substrate than lower the hardness and started using a mix of tap and distilled water for water change. Now the pH sits around 7 and the hardness around 5degrees. Betta's fins uncurled, healed and he was fine for a couple months. Then he started getting tears in his fins. When it got bad I treated him with maracyn and maracyn 2 for 10days. It came back again. I took out everything even mildly sharp, sanded the rocks and wood, even remove the top tube of the sponge filter. Still came back. I started thinking he was bitting his fins, so I worked out on finding tank mates. Some I tried stressed him out and made things worse. Until I found the right combination of Otocinclus and amanos shrimp that entertain him without stressing him. He got better and for 4 months, no fin damages were observable. Then I had a problem in the tank, the wood started rotting and I had some fungus growing everywhere, the fungus infected my shrimps and the otos started dying. Betta fish had the worst fins ever. So I took everyone out of the tank, in separate set ups. I medicated the shrimp, they kicked out that fungus after 2 molts. Medicated the Betta with fungus clear and kanaplex for 10 days. In parallel I re-scaped the tank to remove that rotting wood. I put everyone back healthy a month ago. All the the little habitant love the new scape, my Betta healed and even started to look pretty. Then yesterday morning a spotted the come back of the dreadful fin problem! Here how the symptoms look: The fins don't look especially frayed it looks more like tears. But they exhibit tiny red sore at the tip. Rather than progressing in fin loss, the red spots just come and go. One day one place, another day somewhere else. It's always on the fins, the tear left behind often doesn't heal but doesn't get larger. Just new tears appears. The picture below shows how my Betta look like as off yesterday: At this point after 1years of the same chronic problem is there even a point medicating? I should mentioned that it never affects his behavior, it doesn't matter how bad his fins look he is oblivious to it! I just worry all the time that it is going to cause him a major infection, so I medicated every time it looked too bad. So any thoughts on what it is? Chronic fin rot ? Fin bitting ? Something else? Bad immune system? Here is the list of medication I tried so far all showed slight improvement but never stopped it from coming back: Kanaplex, Maracyn, Maracyn2, Paracleanse, Salt, fungus clear & botanical/tanins. anyone has already seen that? Or knows? Because I am sooo tired of it.

Thanks!

Thanks I am already treating the tank directly. The medication maracyn2 and fungus clear in the water and kanaplex feeding seems to work for the cherry barbs. The white patches on my adult male are slowly going away and healing, one of the young still have whitish lips, but his behavior is normal. Barbs have started mating again yesterday evening and the shrimps finally came out of hiding. So I'll do my big clean today and another round of treatment. How do you usually sterilize your items? A while ago I had to deal with a little bit of ich in a tank and I just soaked everything in bleach for 24h after using. Will that work for columnaris too? Or should I also boil everything that can be?

Update. Third loach died quick. I added maracyn 2 and fungus clear into the tank two days ago. Also Feeding the fish with kanamycin food. Monday I'll do a 50% water change to end the maracyn treatment and I will put a new dose of fungus clear and maracyn 2. Today two of my barb show sign of infection. One has white lips another one white scale lesions. I have 5 adults and 7 youngs in there, for long time it was a species only tank and I watched the little ones grow up. Not much else I can do than keep the treatment going and watch what happens. Very sad on how it turned out. Also reorganizing the apartment to make room for a proper quarantine tank. today is shopping day, I'll get some transparent bin and river rock and start my quarantine to grow algae there. I am not giving up on getting hillstream loaches in the future. It's going to take time and I have a long way to go to save my barbs and make the my 20gallon habitable again, but I am trying to stay optimistic. I'll take any advice for tank clean up and quarantine set up. Thanks.

Thanks a lot @Colu. I don't understand why they put on the maracyn packet that it treats columnaris 🤷. I should receive the fungus tab today. So I will have it on hand. As of this morning I did a 30% water, added aquarium salt 1tbsp, and 2 packs of maracyn, before I left for work. Tonight I will add another tbsp of salt and start feeding them maracyn 2. Thanks for the recipe. Hopefully I'll get that loach to eat it. I am already making homemade food for my algae eater with spirulina powder, spinach, yeast and garlic. So I'll incorporate antibiotics to that. As for the barbs they eat anything I throw at them so it should not be too difficult. I don't have seachem guard or focus.

Thanks, I'll get some jungle tabs right now online to have it on hand. But this nitrofurazone doesn't seem safe for inverts and scaless fish. Will a combination of kanaplex and maracyn and salt work?

Oh really I thought if you had 1 or 3 it should be fine. It's my first time keeping this fish, so I tried my best. My tank has a cliff of dragon stone with caves that my shrimps and my fry barbs love. The back stone is indeed close to the glass and I can't pass my thinger there. I'll fill it up with filter floss after work. The third loach seem ok for now. Thanks for your help everyone. Hopefully the fatalities will stop here.

I just checked on it and she is dead now. This is very sad, I waited 3 months to get these fish, and I fell in love with them right away.

I got them from my LFS, they do medicated quarantine there. I never had problem with them so I don't quarantine the fish again. The Dead one did had a wound, but when I found it my barbs where eating it. On the morning I did spot all 3 loaches and they were fine. I took a pic of the dead one. It had red marks inside it's mouth and belly, see the pic. I just added maracyn to the tank. I have a plant/black worm culture bin of about 6 gallon I could transfer the loaches in. It has 2 air stone but no heater and no lid. I can fix the lid thing by taping window screen. Temp in the room is about 70.

Just got eyes on that loaches and it has been getting worse overnight.

Thanks! I'll monitor it.

I added 3 hillstream loaches to my 20 gallon Sunday. Today I find one dead and another one with a white patch. Tank has been running for a year, heavily planted, temp 76, 1 large sponge filter and one hang back filter on high flow, in which I am growing a large fitonia and a large peace lily in aquaponic. Ammonia 0, nitrites 0, nitrates 0-1, phosphate 0, ph7, gh6, kh2. It is stocked with cherry barbs, amano shrimp and mystery snails. I included a pic of the white patch. The other fish don't show any behavior change or white patches. I don't have a quarantine tank running or room for it. My option is to treat the whole tank. It could be a fungus, columnaris or a wound... What do you guys think? On hand I have : maracyn, maracyn 2, para cleanse, exelp, hikari ickX and kanaplex. Which one of these is safe for hillstream loaches and which one should I use? Please help.