Keeping Fish in the Wake of Columnaris

[Schmorty]

Hello all,

I'm currently on the back half of a Columnaris outbreak in my display tank. The tank is a 75 gallon planted with lots of crypts, swords, anubias, bucephelandra, and java fern.

The tank is only a few months old. I recently moved cities, and had consolidated three smaller tanks worth of fish and plants into the one tank. I had all the fish for between 6 months and 2 years with no major disease issues previously. However, in hindsight, I'd lose the occasional fish with Columnaris-like sypmtoms before the move, but the cases were isolated and only happened once in a while.

In the new setup, I wasn't as good at testing water as I should have been, and although the filter could process ammonia properly, I let the nitrates build up faster than my water change schedule and plants could handle. Therefore, my fish were exposed to 80+ppm nitrates for a prolonged period of time, and I believe this and the stress of the move and new municipal water combined caused a lapse in their immune systems and left an opening for the disease to take hold.

I started treating with Erythromycin in the water column once I noticed my platies had white lips and my pearl danios had grey splotches. I soon had mass die-off of my corydoras after I started treating. Within two weeks, my 17-strong school was down to 2, as well as a couple of lost platies, ember tetras, and danios. I stopped the Erythromycin after 10 days of treatment.

I haven't been sure what to do next. The die-off has slowed down to about 1 fish per week. I'm thinking about taking all the fish out and putting them in quarantine tanks treating them with salt or whatever med works better. A 75 is expensive to treat, and most of my favorite fish have passed. I don't want to go nuclear on the 75 since I have a significant investment of  time and money in the plants. I'm wondering if letting the tank sit for a month or two without fish would be enough for the virulent strain of Columnaris to die out and be safe for new fish.

I'm looking for people's input on handling Columnaris, as well as how to handle a diseased tank with loads of plants. And I hope people take away that testing nitrates is important, especially in a newer tank, even if you're an experienced hobbyist. 

My own research has indicated that Columnaris lives in almost all aquatic environments, and it's a matter of how virulent the strain can become and how well a fish can fight it off. It can kill rapidly or slowly. My corydoras are probably a good example of the the rapid death, where the bacteria latches onto the gill tissue and inhibits a fish's ability to breathe. The slower death comes about in many ways, and I don't have as good of an understanding of that.

[Irene]

I'm sorry to hear that! Columnaris is a tough disease to get rid of. Here are the notes I took in the past when I faced it. I'm not sure if I ever got rid of it, so please don't take any of these as the bulletproof solution.

Source #1: Cory from Aquarium Co-Op

• Use Ich-X (or salt if you have no plants) to get rid of the fungus, and then use erythromycin to treat any bacterial infections setting into the open wounds until the mucus coat grows back.

Source #2: Jnb7284 from My Aquarium Club 

Source #3: Ian Sterling from FishLab

 

[Schmorty]

Thanks Irene. Source 2 is an excellent deep dive and I've gained a lot of insight from that, such as why the erythromycin didn't work and how to handle plants and surfaces. Source 3 is actually something I came across in my research, and helped me assess what happened and influenced how I worded my post. I probably won't be able to completely eliminate it, but hopefully I can get my tank where I'm not losing fish anymore.

[TifNee837]

I have had this twice since the beginning of the year. First time I lost 28 fish in 4 and a half days! Absolutely NONE of tge fish showed any physical symptoms whatsoever. Majority lost were platy.

I treated with Maracyn 2 (as it was the only meds I had that treated gram negative bacteria) - this was January

Second time took longer to kill but all fish that died DID have physical symptoms. Classic "saddle back" symptoms followed by the mouth. I lost 26 in 2 weeks. Majority were Molly fry and almost ALL of my endlers.

I treated with Maracyn 2 first - to no avail. Then treated with Kanaplex - this was mid-March.

I'm also thinking I'm dealing with it for yet a third round. No physical symptoms as of yet, except the fish that die, their bodies start to curve downwards, approximately 3 days before death.

I'm currently treating with API Triple Sulfa - this was recommended to me by someone who has dealt with columnaris NUMEROUS times over the last 10+ years.

Just be sure your temp stays below 75 degrees F - this slows it down giving you a slight bit more time to treat.

[Bill]

A few weeks back I had a single platy develop ich (99 percent sure it was ich). The fish was eating and showing no signs of being ill from it and I treated with Ich-X based on Cory's recommendation. It resolved in a few days, did an extra treatment to be sure. A few weeks later the same fish disappeared, and I found him hiding beneath a sponge filter. When he emerged he had a white patch on one side below the gill that from every pic I can find looked like columnaris. Regardless, I figured it must be bacterial so I moved him to a separate tank and treated with Kanaplex. He pretty much laid behind the sponge filter initially. Rather then put it in the water, I made the food mixture that Seachem describes and fed him 3x a day. Fortunately he had an appetite. Now he's swimming around like normal and the white patch is gone. Will move him back probably tomorrow. 

[James Croney]

On 7/14/2020 at 12:36 PM, Schmorty said:

I recently moved cities, and had consolidated three smaller tanks worth of fish and plants into the one tank.

I'm tempted to think that condensing the fish into a smaller tank was the trigger more so than even the new water supply. With that said, you are right in that columnaris is everywhere, it is just waiting for unhappy fish to infect.

To fix this, I would do your best to give them lots of space away from other fish. Maybe even take out of few plants if they are too tightly packed, leaving enough for cover etc. Take out all the fish that even remotely look like they have columnaris. Once the fish is infected enough to get that 'mushy grey spot' on their body, they pass it to other fish very easily, which is only worsened if they are all stressed from being close together.

Alternatively you could consider tank placement. If for example your new tank location gets hit by the sun for a few hours each day, where previously it did not, that would stress the fish out. The sunlight would be fine, but it would increase temperature fluxuations and cause the plants to react faster and so on.

[funkelt]

Columnaris is really making its rounds right now! Almost every post in my fish groups both on Facebook and elsewhere are being dominated by the subject. Ive been dealing with it my my QT tanks for 2 months now and Ive tried quite a lot of meds and learned a lot. Before I knew what it was I treated my new, EXPENSIVE breeder guppies with the med trio, then 14 days of medicated general trio flakes, then Erythromycin and Furan 2, and now sulfaplex. It seems to have slowed down with the sulfaplex though Im still losing fish. At this point I dont expect anyone left to make it because of internal damage but at least now I know what to look for, how to identify it, and I have sulfaplex in my medicine cabinet to add to my QT treatment from the beginning. I didnt know about columnaris before but now my QT trio is going to be a quartet, especially with so many fish farms, stores, and breeders being affected right now.