I've had freshwater tropical fish for many years and this one has me stumped.
I transferred some fish home from tank at work, brought an established filter home with them. So in my 20 gallon home tank I had my dwarf pleco, a plat gourami, and a cherry barb. All seemed fine for about a month. Then I went and purchased 4 gold barbs, after about a week they started rubbing against tank decorations. They weren't going berserk with itching but something was obviously wrong. I had my water tested, results were fine. I didn't see any parasites on them and appetite was good, I treated them with Coppersafe. it helped but didn't stop the problem, I then treated with malachite green, again it helped while the treatment was given, but afterwards they started rubbing again. Still no visible parasites. I was advised to treat with malachite green again, same results. At that point it had now been three months since this all started, no deaths, good appetites. So my local fish store suggested adding freshwater salt and raising the temp from 75 to 79. After two months of that the behavior has almost stopped completely, but every once in a while one of the gold barbs will rub just once or twice then stop. So, I'm wondering if I should continue the salt, what to do with the temp, etc. I was thinking they had ick, but i have never seen ick continue on for so long without a single death. Has anyone seen this before?
I transferred some fish home from tank at work, brought an established filter home with them. So in my 20 gallon home tank I had my dwarf pleco, a plat gourami, and a cherry barb. All seemed fine for about a month. Then I went and purchased 4 gold barbs, after about a week they started rubbing against tank decorations. They weren't going berserk with itching but something was obviously wrong. I had my water tested, results were fine. I didn't see any parasites on them and appetite was good, I treated them with Coppersafe. it helped but didn't stop the problem, I then treated with malachite green, again it helped while the treatment was given, but afterwards they started rubbing again. Still no visible parasites. I was advised to treat with malachite green again, same results. At that point it had now been three months since this all started, no deaths, good appetites. So my local fish store suggested adding freshwater salt and raising the temp from 75 to 79. After two months of that the behavior has almost stopped completely, but every once in a while one of the gold barbs will rub just once or twice then stop. So, I'm wondering if I should continue the salt, what to do with the temp, etc. I was thinking they had ick, but i have never seen ick continue on for so long without a single death. Has anyone seen this before?