When to pull healthy fish from quarantine?

[Plutoids Mom]

Seven days ago, I pulled 5 of my 6 gold barbs from my 75 gallon because all five were lethargic and sometimes tilting head down.  One was also missing it's tail.  No other outward signs of problems with these fish and only thing odd that happened in the tank was the barbs gorged on Congo tetra eggs that morning.  I put them in quarantine and started treating them with Kanaplex.  So far, I've lost one Monday and probably losing the tailless one today (so will be down to 3 barbs in quarantine tank).  I've given the max of three Kanaplex dosages (Thursday, Saturday, and Monday), but only one of the barbs looks normal now.  My question is: when can I pull the one healthy barb out of quarantine?  Since it's a schooling fish, I don't want it to get too stressed by being in there by itself, assuming the other barbs also pass away, but I don't know what is going on with them and don't want to give something to the rest of the fish in the main tank.

[Fish Folk]

Hmm... first off, good for you to have an QT tank set up!

I’d probably keep the survivor in QT for another week. Turn lights off. Water change... feed lightly.

Try to figure out what happened to the one with nipped fins. How did that happen?

[Mmiller2001]

For me, 4 weeks. I'm probably over cautious, but that's just best practice in my home.

[Colu]

With the symptoms you describe it's a bacterial infection kanaplex treats gram negative bacterial infection if you seeing no improvement with kanaplex I would treat with maracyn that treats gram positive bacterial infections and aquarium salt 1 table spoon for 2 gallons

[Plutoids Mom]

Life got busy after I posted, so thanks for the replies! I started dosing Maracyn Thursday afternoon, but I lost the last of the three sick fish this morning. The healthy fish is still healthy, so yay! He's going to hang out in quarantine for at least another week. I'm itching to get some fish for my other tank so we'll see how long my patience holds out to keep him in there 4 weeks lol.

Just me wondering, could the barbs have actually "eaten" themselves to death when they ate all the congo tetra eggs? I fed the tank that morning and nothing seemed off until an hour-ish after the spawning stopped. I'm trying to decide if it was a weird coincidence or maybe I shouldn't get any more barbs since the tetras spawn weekly and any future barbs will have the same egg buffet.

[Colu]

9 hours ago, Plutoids Mom said:

Life got busy after I posted, so thanks for the replies! I started dosing Maracyn Thursday afternoon, but I lost the last of the three sick fish this morning. The healthy fish is still healthy, so yay! He's going to hang out in quarantine for at least another week. I'm itching to get some fish for my other tank so we'll see how long my patience holds out to keep him in there 4 weeks lol.

Just me wondering, could the barbs have actually "eaten" themselves to death when they ate all the congo tetra eggs? I fed the tank that morning and nothing seemed off until an hour-ish after the spawning stopped. I'm trying to decide if it was a weird coincidence or maybe I shouldn't get any more barbs since the tetras spawn weekly and any future barbs will have the same egg buffet.

I don't think it was from eating Congo tetra eggs it was more than likely a bacterial infection looking at how  quickly they died the one you have left i would finish the course of maracyn and monitor for 2weeks to make sure what ever it had is gone and you won't be introducing any disease back into the main tank

Edited April 19, 2021 by Colu

[Plutoids Mom]

Well, Tuesday was day 6 of the Maracyn treatment/ water change day, healthy gold barb up and died on me. Today, my 3+ year old rosy barb started swimming in circles in the main tank and I'm getting suspicious of the last gold barb in there also. Since I don't know what to do or I did to trigger this, I'll start another thread since the topic is now different. 🤪