brown spots, dropsy, ulcer - I'm at my wits' end!

[paperdragon]

Pudge the orange fantail is having some problems. I had him in QT for four months - two treating him for ulcers, then two making sure he was over them. He seemed fine, I moved him back to the main tank, and he got sick again.
First the ulcers came back, then he started getting some faint brown speckles, then he pineconed, and then the speckles got worse and he got brown edging on his fins.
Normally I'd think ammonia burns or nitrite poisoning, or something water-quality related. But I tested the water: 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 15 nitrate. Same as its been for quite a while now.
My calico is fine, my dojos are fine, I've added nothing else to the tank.
Tank is 75g, planted, he's about 4", and his tankmates are the 4" calico fantail and 3x 5" dojos. Water temp is 72F, pH is 7.2, filtration is 2 HOB's with a total of about 650gph.
Feeding is Hikari pellets, homemade gel food, and occasionally Ken's no-carb veggie wafers. I don't give them anything that floats.


Can someone please either give me a clue as to what's going on, or send me a nice solid brick wall to beat my head on?

:wall:

[Lupin]

I am so sorry to hear your fish is having issues, PD. Could you dose epsom salts? This should increase hardness a bit to help with the osmoregulation. How does its poop look? I'd consider feeding him MediGold for internal bacterial infection. What did you treat him in the last two months for that issue?

[paperdragon]

Do you mean add epsom salt to the main tank? Or just salt baths? I've given him an epsom salt bath already, but wasn't sure how often to repeat it (daily? every few hours?). His poop looks normal to me, and I treated him with a couple rounds of minocylene in his gel food following the instructions you gave me a while back (I also found the page on thegab.org and bookmarked it).

[Lupin]

Ahh...Now I remember about the minocycline. Yes, I meant adding epsom salts to the tank.

As far as the brown speckles, do they appear to be scale color? The black tints usually are indicators of healing wounds or burns. He doesn't look to be pineconing to me anymore though. Did that antibiotic help with his pineconing at all?

[paperdragon]

Ok, how much epsom salt should I add? The speckles do seem to be in the scale pigmentation, but there hasn't been anything to cause burns (I've not had any kind of spikes in my levels, and I've not forgotten my Prime during water changes). Maybe my net is too rough and scraped him? I've never seen anything like that before either though. And the pineconing is still there, that just happened within the last couple days (long after the antibiotics), it's not as severe as some cases I've seen though.

[Lupin]

I must be growing old to vaguely notice the pineconing effect.

Dose epsom salt a teaspoon per 4 gallons. Can you separate him to another tank?

[paperdragon]

Nah, you're not getting old, my fish photography just leaves a lot to be desired.

I'll separate him out and add the epsom salt to the QT today then. Thanks!

[paperdragon]

Well, he died last night. :(

[Lupin]

I am sorry to hear that, PD.:(