svelez

Hi all! I know it's been a month, and I just wanted to post an update in case anyone visits this thread. I have not lost a single danio, but it's certainly been a frustrating experience. After a full course of Maracyn 2, my danios in the hospital tank looked better but not completely healed, so after 2 large water changes I proceeded with a full course of Kanaplex/Jungle Fizz tabs, according to @Colu's instructions. The danios were still acting okay throughout all of this and eating okay, but I did noticed after the Kanaplex/Jungle tabs, their appetite greatly increased, which I took as a good sign. The bad news is that the meds caused a slight ammonia/nitrite bump. I was expecting it, and testing the water for it, but what I wasn't expecting was for a sponge filter completely clogged up with mold or fungus. There was visible mold (white and green spots) growing on the sides of the tank near the air stones, and the sponge filter was so clogged that when I removed it, it wouldn't release the water and weighed a ton! I also ended up with one danio that got a fungus infection (I'm assuming secondary to the columnaris). To say the least, this was a strange experience, and while I think the meds worked, I'm highly suspicious of those Jungle Fizz tabs. Date on the box was fine (2028). I've never seen mold growing on the aquarium glass, and certainly never had a sponge filter clogged with visible white fungus. My danios ended up flashing and beating themselves up quite a bit with the ammonia/nitrite bump, but after switching out for a HOB filter filled with cycled media, we now have that under control. I've had the danios in a Level 3 salt treatment for a few weeks, just to make sure the columnaris is gone and to help all the abrasions from them flashing to heal. They are looking a lot better now, although I still see a couple spots that are not quite fully healed. A couple of the males have actually decided to color up and I'm seeing some spawning activity, which I take as a sign they're feeling much better, even with all that salt. I plan to start taking it out through water changes in the next couple days, and hopefully, fingers crossed, the infection won't return! Side note - no one in the main display tank ever got this, thank goodness. A huge thank you to @Colu for taking the time to respond to my many questions!

cmo1922 that is not something I had considered, but yes, I tested the tap water and aquarium water within the same 10 minutes. I'll keep in mind what you said, though. My water source is Lake Ontario, and while the source is always the same lake, I wouldn't be surprised if Lake Ontario's parameters change from time to time. The only thing I can think of is that the large population of ramshorn snails (which I did NOT want in there but they migrated from another aquarium) and the heavy plant load are absorbing the minerals in the water. Luckily my tap water has such a high KH, so my ph is very steady at 8. I've even tried lowering the ph by adding a bunch of botanicals (leaves, wood, alder cones), and while I get a nice blackwater affect, the ph is always the same.

AndreaW thank you for sharing that. I have wondered if that is something I should consider - forgoing the mystery snails all together. I'm sure the pygmy cories in this tank are enjoying the softer water anyways. I found an article from Fish Lab (https://fishlab.com/aquarium-gh/) where he suggests the GH might become lower because the plants and other residents are absorbing all the minerals, so I still might want to consider adding one of the small wonder shells to give the plants a boost. Although some of them are blooming (buce and anubias), so maybe they are just fine with the regular water changes. Well, I am certainly learning how much detail there is involved in keeping aquariums! Thanks again.

Thank you for the feedback/suggestions! I did not know they had such a short lifespan. A couple of the ones I've bought were already full size, but strangely those are the ones I still have (2 magenta and one jade). It seems when I get them young, they start to grow but then just die one by one, some after only a couple months. So maybe it is lack of quality food and/or something missing in the water. I only keep my mystery snails with nano fish to avoid bullying, or worse. I have never seen my rosy loaches or pygmy cories bother them.

Hi everyone, I have been having the worst luck with keeping mystery snails alive for more than 6 months. At first I thought it might be the temperature - the snails grew super fast and had a lot of shell erosion in 77 degrees F. And then after a few months they all died one by one. So I tried again with a new batch of snails, with the temperature around 75-76 degrees F. I feed them a mix of veggie wafers and Hikari crab cuisine, and they often go for the repashy that I feed my pygmy cories. The water out of my tap is hard (ph 8 to 8.2, GH is 7 dKH, and KH is 11 dKH), so I did not really think there was an issue with lack of calcium. Unfortunately, they are still dying one by one, some with very serious shell erosion, and some did not even grow to full size this time. So today I decided, out of curiosity, to test the GH and KH in one of the aquariums where I've been repeatedly losing mystery snails. It was exactly one week since I did a 50% water change on this tank. Turns out that, while my ph was still 8, the GH and KH were nearly half of what it is out of the tap!!! GH was around 4 dKH, and KH was 5-6 dKH. How did this happen?! I do have a fair bit of spider wood, botanicals, and plants in there, along with the mystery snails and a large population of ramshorn snails. Are they just absorbing all the minerals? Could this be why I'm losing the mystery snails? Or do I need to just figure out a better feeding regime for them? I have a calcium test kit for freshwater on order, so we'll see what that says, but either way, I'm wondering if I should be looking into using something like Seachem Equilibrium or Wonder Shells. I know more frequent water changes might help re-mineralize the water, but the pygmy cories in the tank absolutely hate water change day, and I'd rather not stress them out further with twice weekly water changes. Any thoughts or feedback are hugely appreciated! P.S. - I attached a pic of the tank in question. It has been running for 6 months. 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and around 10-15 nitrate.

Thank you again! Next question is - my panda garras in the main display tank still seem fine, even though the danios have been affected for a couple weeks now. I feel like doing a preventative treatment on the display tank with Maracyn 2, just one dose and let sit a week like Cory does with the quarantine meds. I'm not sure how well Maracyn 2 works in my hard water, though (ph 8.2). Could I do a single dose of Kanaplex and/or the Jungle Fungus tabs, and let sit a week, or do these meds not work that way? Or should I just skip meds on the display tank and do extra water changes? Thank you for all your help!

Thank you @Colu. I appreciate it. Should I keep up with the salt concentration, or is that a bad mix with Kanaplex/Jungle Fungus tabs? Thanks again.

Tonight marks the last dose of Maracyn 2 (5 day course), and while the original spots of infection on my danios' mouths look completely healed, I am seeing different white patches on them elsewhere. Unfortunately, I can't tell if this is the infection spreading or if they injured themselves 😞. The other day I installed a light on the hospital tank so I could see how the fish were doing (didn't have a spare light earlier unfortunately), and it was a rookie mistake - I turned the light on and all the danios went flying, trying to bury themselves in anything they could find. I feel terrible I scared them so. They looked extremely beat up after that. Now a few have some white patches on their fins, scrapes on their bodies (looks like missing scales), and one even has was looks like injuries to both eyes, with something looking like loose scales covering both eyes. I realize all of this could be the infection spreading, although again the white on their mouths is all gone, and they are eating very well. Anyways, to be on the safe side, I thought I would try kanaplex/jungle fungus tabs as suggested. Should I wait a few days in between, or just do a couple very large water changes to get rid of the Maracyn 2? Thank you again for all the suggestions. Sorry to be a pain and keep asking questions!

Thank you so much, @Colu! Especially for the tip on flubendazole. I'll have to see if I can get it from somewhere. I ordered the Jungle Fungus tabs and Kanaplex for just in case. Ken's Fish already shipped so should be here in a couple days. Now I just have to see if I have enough Maracyn 2 to dose the entire 125 gallon display tank. For the danios in quarantine, I'll increase the salt to 1 Tbsp per gallon to go with the "Level 3" treatment. The salt doesn't seem to bother them much. The one danio who has the worst case was already looking a lot better this morning, after just 12 hours and that was just with half of the salt dosage (I spread it out to give them time to adjust). I am wondering if they really need the Maracyn 2 as well, given that there is already improvement. I hate dosing antibiotics if I don't have to, especially as I am likely to crash the cycle in that temporary hospital tank.

Hi everyone, I've been keeping fish for a few years, and have been lucky enough to never encounter columnaris until now. Ugh! For a little background, the issue is with my 125 gal. "river style" tank (doesn't have a manifold, but 2 powerful canisters creating a nice flow). It's been running for about 1 1/2 years, no new fish added recently, 50% water changes weekly, temp. between 75 and 77 degrees F, ph 8.2, 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and nitrate below 20. The panda garras in this tank, which I've had for a few years now, came in initially from the fish store with a terrible case of parasites, which seem very resistant to meds. I seem to every few months need to do a couple rounds of either Expel-P or Praziquantel to just get the levels down, but they're clearly never fully gone. A few months ago I did lose 2 panda garras after treating with Expel-P. I don't believe I overdosed, but at the time wondered if the parasite load was much higher than I thought. Everyone else, including the orange-finned danios that I added about 6 months ago (after 6 week qt), seemed fine. The only other residents in this tank are ramshorn snails (and a ton of plants). Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I was just about to do a 2nd round (after 2 weeks apart) of Praziquantel when I noticed a female danio with white on her mouth and coming out of her one gill. I suspected either fungus or bacterial. A few other danios had a tiny trace amount of white on their mouths, but no where else. Everyone acted fine. However, I decided to do a round of Maracyn and Ich-X together (and I realize now Maracyn isn't really effective for gram-negative, but didn't realize at the time). Since whatever it was didn't seem severe, I just dosed the tank once and let it sit a week, per aquariumcoop instructions. This did absolutely nothing, and the danio ended up with even more white stuff on both gills, her mouth, and one fin. Not fluffy, but very noticeable. I removed her to another tank and did 1 Tbsp of aquarium salt per 3 gallons water. After a couple of days she was flashing like crazy, but then after 5 days the white stuff was pretty much all gone. I did a water change at the 1 week mark, without adding more salt, and when she continued to do well for another week, added her back into the main tank. During her salt treatment, I did one more treatment of Maracyn in the display tank, and after that was finished, finally got around to dosing Praziquantel again. All the tiny trace amount of white on the other danios' mouths disappeared during this time. Everyone seemed to be doing fine since then, until now. I started another round of Praziquantel this past Saturday. Everyone, panda garras and danios, has been flashing very badly since then, I am assuming from the flukes dropping off. Unfortunately, I also saw the return of some white patches on my one danio, and it seems even worse. Last night, when I looked in the tank, there were several danios with slight patches of white on their mouths and what looked like pale patches on the "saddle" area of a few danios. Now that I'm thinking this is columnaris (possibly a secondary infection from the flukes???), I removed ALL of the danios to a hospital tank last night, and am going to try a salt treatment at 1 Tbsp per 2 gallons. I do have Maracyn 2 if it comes to that, but at the moment everyone still acts fine. I'm hesistant to do an antibiotic since I'm not 100% sure of what this is, although it does seem to be columnaris, albeit a slow moving strain. I also turned the temp down to 74-75 degrees, since I guess that slows down the infection. My main concern right now is the panda garras, which are still in the main display tank. They are even harder to catch than the danios, and more easily stressed by being caught, and since they show no sign of bacterial infection, just a lot of flashing, I'm inclined to leave them be and just continue the Praziquantel. However, should I consider dosing Maracyn 2 in the display tank as a preventative? I know, from research I did online, it seems the flavobacterium that causes columnaris is probably present in the tank, just looking for someone with a weakened immune system. I wish I could do salt, but the plants would probably die, and I'm not even sure how the panda garras would do in salt. I can't find much info about them online. I do not care about the ramshorn snails; they do a nice job cleaning but multiply so bad. Thank you for any suggestions provided, and so sorry for the story-length post!!! Sarah BV

I have pellets that are small enough, but think I would have better luck with repashy. Is there a dosage to mix it in repashy gel food? Thank you so much!

Hi! I've been looking through this forum and noticed some very different dosing instructions for levimasole, and was wondering if anyone can help clear up some of my confusion. For some background: I have some wild caught rosy loaches. I posted about them earlier; unfortunately I'm still losing some here and there, about one a month, to suspected parasites. Their symptoms follow wasting disease to a T. I've tried Paracleanse, but unfortunately each time I've used it, it crashed my cycle. I am thinking that, while I was using cycled sponge filters from my main tank, they might not have been mature enough. So these poor fish have gone through an in-tank cycle (with me doing daily water changes and dosing Prime) twice, which I'm sure is making the situation much worse. I feel so bad, but I didn't know how long it took for a sponge filter to mature in your display tank. Anyways, I just finished a course of Prazipro; since it doesn't have metronidazole, my water parameters remained 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and low nitrates throughout. Unfortunately, during the treatment, one of the fish that was already looking bad did not improve, and one more has started to look iffy. The symptoms are typically the classic wasting away, getting very skinny, too weak to swim much, hiding, loss of color, and an initial good appetite that slowly decreases until they're no longer eating. I have also observed rapid breathing at times (with the tank fully cycled), and now I have one fish whose tail fins are tightly clamped. He looks dreadful, only swimming with his front fins, but he is still eating very well and not hiding. It doesn't seem like Prazipro is working, so I did a water change late on day 5. I would like to try Levimasole now, but how long should I wait? I know these can't be mixed. As for the dosing instructions - I have Fritz Expel-P from Aquarium Co-op, and the instructions say 1 packet per 10 gallons. I believe each packet is 1 gram of levimasole hydrochloride. You dose the tank, wait 24 hours, do a water change, and then wait a week and dose again. However, on this forum, I see people using Levimasole from Select Aquatics/Greg Sage, and the directions are much different. I believe he is dosing 1 gram per 100 gallons, waiting 24 hours, water change, and immediately dose again? I'm assuming this is because it is a much lower dosage, but I'm not sure. Any thoughts on the most effective dosing regime for Levimasole would be super appreciated! Thank you so much and sorry for the long story-length post!

Thank you so much for your kind reply. Ugh, I feel like this is a guessing game, and I'm still very new to fish keeping (the quarantine tank itself is actually only my 2nd tank, but of course I have two new tanks waiting to be set up). So I am not making very educated guesses here. In retrospect, yes, I think a better way to go might have been to let the new fish settle in for a few days, then do med trio (or at least parasite meds) to hopefully prevent any sudden unexpected deaths. I just kept thinking it might be better to wait, but clearly not. You're right, it's super hard not to feed fish when they looked starved! I have a group of trifasciata rainbows that will literally jump out of water and splash you in the face when they feel they are under fed! I'm still bothered that I don't know what killed that nice male, but it could have been anything really. I don't know enough to do an autopsy, and lack equipment. So hopefully the med trio will get anything that I'm not seeing. If not, I have a couple other meds I could try (levimasole might be worth a try later anyways). Again, thank you for your feedback! It is at least encouraging for me to know that I'm not going around making obvious mistakes, that I can simply "try" to do my best. And as unfortunate as this experience of losing fish is, at least I know what I might do better next time, based on this experience.

I am wondering if anyone has any experience performing water changes and feeding fish during the week long quarantine med trio. Here is why I ask: Two weeks ago, I had a shipment of wild caught rosy loaches arrive. Besides two that sadly didn't make it during shipping, the rest all looked healthy and very active. Total of 21 fish. They were very thin, which I was expecting, but at least I had no problems getting them to eat. I have had them in a 20 gal. long quarantine for two weeks (and have every intention of keeping them in there for several more!). I've been using a sponge filter that was in my display tank and fully cycled, although I did daily water changes for the first two weeks to make sure the filter could keep up with the new bio load. I also had included a bit of poly bio filter to help keep an eye on water quality. I was feeding twice a day, as I saw elsewhere online (seriouslyfish.com I think) that this might help the new fish gain weight. It seemed to work! With the exception of a few smaller ones who are still thin but otherwise act okay, the rest have fattened up very well, maybe even too much. I admittedly struggle to find a balance between making sure the younger ones are getting enough to eat, but not overfeeding 😞 Anyways, all seemed fine until today, when I went to do a water change and discovered one of the larger males dead. I did not see any visible sign of illness, although it almost looked like there were some spots of blood internally. Hard to tell whether that was internal bleeding or just because these fish are so tiny and practically see-through. There were two lesions on the side of the dead fish, but I don't know if that could have been from the other fish picking at him after he died. They eat anything unfortunately. I am pretty sure I would have noticed open sores on a fish if he had them earlier, but again, not positive. After removing the dead fish, I did a 50% water change, refilled and dosed with the med trio. I was eventually planning on using the med trio, given that these are wild caught fish, but was trying to hold off until all fish had gained decent weight. I know parasites could of course prevent that, but I never saw any signs of white stringy poo. My only concern now - apart from the fact that I don't know what killed the fish - is not feeding or cleaning the quarantine tank for a whole week. Does anyone have any thoughts or recommendations? Thank you so much in advance, and if I did not provide some critical piece of info, please let me know.

I was starting to wonder about parasites, as I know some can also cause the flashing behavior. Then my gut reaction to dose with the quarantine med trio (includes paracleanse) might have been a good one! Thank you.