CPD disease

[modified lung]

I wasn't paying much attention due to COVID and back issues and missed pH crashes (low 6) in a few tanks. Water quality is all back to normal but it looks like the CPDs caught a secondary infection from the stress. In one tank the symptoms didn't show up until after the water quality issues were fixed so I don't think they are directly caused by the low pH or any nitrogen issues it caused.

Between the tanks only the CPDs have been affected. Rosy loaches, sparkling gouramis, ember tetra, pygmy corys, glolight danios, ricefish all unaffected. Another CPD tank that didn't have any pH issues has also not been affected.

They are still looking lethargic but one tank looks like it's on the way to recover after 2 weeks with no deaths and no treatments. I just turned down the lights. Although the youngest fish seem to be affected the most and this is the tank with the oldest CPDs.

The other tank with the younger CPDs after about 4 or 5 days has had its first death this morning. These guys are still surprisingly active even though they're otherwise not looking very good.

Some symptoms: non-uniform off-white to slightly yellowish spots, weight loss, some tail fin rot, skin darkening on smallest fish only.

Any ideas on what this might be? (It's not ich)

[Colu]

It looks like epistylis it feed's off gram negative bacteria on your fish and spreads more quickly at higher temperatures the most effective treatment is a broad spectrum antibiotic treatment such as kanaplex in food

[modified lung]

On 7/22/2022 at 4:16 PM, Colu said:

It looks like epistylis it feed's off gram negative bacteria on your fish and spreads more quickly at higher temperatures the most effective treatment is a broad spectrum antibiotic treatment such as kanaplex in food

I'll try it and report back 

[modified lung]

Not completely cured yet but I'm starting to see an obvious improvement. I haven't found anymore deaths except for the one.

[modified lung]

All but 2 or 3 fish are now cured with 80-90% survival. I really appreciate the advice @Colu. This was the first major disease I've ever had and I wouldn't have known what to do without you.

 

A few notes for future me and anyone else that might be interested...

The disease spread to the CPDs in every tank I have but no other fish. Even in the community tank, only the CPDs caught it. I caught the disease in the early stages in the breeding tank. These fish cured themselves without meds soon after the pH was brought back up to normal (~7.6). These were also older fish which might have played a role.

Most of the fish were noticably thinner which means they hadn't been eating much flake food for a while. I mixed the meds with a high protein 0.15 mm fry food (Kens Growth #00). But most of the sick fish rejected this food with or without Garlic Guard included.

Dry food in general isn't the easiest for fish. I suspect it's even harder to eat when they're sick. I mixed a new batch with some powdered fry food (Ken's Green). Despite being mostly adult fish, they took to this much better even without adding Garlic Guard. I started to see an improvement after a week of feeding this mix.

I also salted the tank to about 0.8 ppt. Elsewhere I saw recommendations to do lots of water changes but I didn't do any until yesterday.

[Colu]

Good to hear that there getting better