I'm sorry to hear that you lost them all. It's hard to wrap your head around a catastrophe like this, but it sounds like you've got the right attitude about moving forward with an improved approach. I am not an expert like others are on dealing with disease, so my best advice is to keep this conversation going and invite the experts to weigh in.
The good thing is, there are now no fish at risk in the system now, so you can do things like crank the temperature up to max to kill off remaining ich without detriment at all. I'd set your tank back up the way you want it and treat everything at once without fish in it. Don't jump right back in buying all new fish yet and slowly add them back after you have followed through with treatment measures for the initial problem. You will need recommendations on intensity and duration of treatment(s) from the local experts. Let's see what they have to say...
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I guess this thread will be a good lesson to anyone who winds up in the same situation I did. I decided to jot down a complete list of every mistake I made in this whole process that led to the unfortunate demise of all of my fish. I pray others can learn from my mistakes as I have:
1. I didn't put the new fish into quarantine, I put them in the main tank.
2. I accidentally used expired ich medicine and improperly dosed it, putting in too much the moment I saw a fish with ich. (I panicked).
3. When I did the first large water change to remove the meds, I was too hasty and not careful about the water temperature, causing it to suddenly drop 3-4 degrees, which then caused all the healthy fish massive stress and made the ich go into full on outbreak and cover all of the fish in cysts the next day.
4. I started researching the most commonly used ways to treat ich and began to raise the temp to 83 degrees and use API aquarium salt. I also removed all plants, ornaments, and gravel, and was doing small waterchanges while vacuuming the tomites off the floor of the tank. Turns out salt was horrible for my gouramis and made them produce way too much slime coat and harm them more than help.
5. The already stressed and immune deficient fish, subjected to high temps that were great for bad bacteria to thrive, developed hemorrhagic septicemia and severe fin and tail rot, which attacked their organs and circulatory systems, killing them off rapidly. I had no idea why the water was cloudy and smelled so horrible and I had to do massive water changes twice a day, but that still did not save the rapidly deteriorating fish.
6. The use of meds (the old and new Kordon rid ich +) uncycled the tank, so on top of ich and severe bacterial infections, they also had to deal with the ammonia/nitrite cycling process. I put the carbon back in for two to three days and did many a water change to remove all the meds and keep the water quality perfect, but I did nothing to treat the bacterial infections since I didn't know what was going on at the time beyond the ich. I kept the temperature at 83 and stopped using salt.
7. All of the fish are now dead, attempt to cure them was a complete and utter failure and a string of screw-ups. This will not happen ever again.
Now I will list what I SHOULD have done from the start that might have turned the tides on this awful situation:
1. Set up a quarantine tank and let it cycle for a few weeks, then go buy healthy looking fish and properly acclimate them to the QT, never letting them mix in any way with the main tank for at least a month until I can be sure they are totally healthy.
2. If ich did break out in the main tank, I would have put all of the fish into a quarantine tank (the reason I didn't is because the QT I have is 10 gallons and my fish were all huge... so I'd need at least a 20 gallon QT). The main tank is 60 gallons and treating it is a nightmare, much easier to treat fish in a smaller tank and less expensive medicine-wise, even if ich is contagious and will have infected the entire main tank and will infect the QT.
3. I would have raised the temp to 90 degrees on the main tank and let it bake for two full weeks to kill the ich without fish in it, while treating the fish in QT with proper current medicine and small daily water changes, vacuuming the tomites out, and also keeping the temp around 80.
4. I probably would have used Maracide in case of secondary bacterial infections, so I could use it in conjunction with Maracyn or Maracyn 2. The main thing is, I would be patient and not jump to dump meds in the tank, but try to plan out each event carefully based on the condition of the fish. In the best scenario, they would not get secondary infections because I would have been ultra careful not to stress them out and keep their water temp and parameters perfect. I'd only have to kill the ich over the course of two to four weeks, then move them safely back into the main tank.
5. All or most of the fish survive. Win!
