Strange

[rrkss]

I am almost done curing ich in my planted tank using a heat (88*) + salt (1 tablespoon per 10 gallons) + maracide. With my last treatment tommorow. Anyways during the treatment, my cherry barbs started to act listless not eating and staying on the bottom so I associated it with stress from the high temperature and started lowering the thermostat by 2 degrees per 12 hours. Right now the tank is down to 82 degrees and will be lowered to 80 degrees tommorow morning with my target temperature at 77 degrees. What bothers me is that the entire cherry barb school is still showing stress but now they also have a very agressive fin rot (100% sure its finrot and not nipping because of the white frayed edges) and I lost 1 cherry barb already. One of them has clamped fins and another one is just sitting at the surface gasping. All my other fish are very healthy and still are pigs. The cherry barbs won't even look at food. Anyways here are the parameters:

Tank size: 29 gallons
Ammonia: 0.0 (tested 5 minutes ago)
Nitrite: 0.0
ph: 7.2
Alkalinity 140 (I add a little NaHCO3 (baking soda) to buffer the water to prevent ph swings from my CO2 injection)

Fish stock:

5 Cherry Barbs
6 Gold Barbs
6 Black Widow Tetras
1 Rainbow Shark

Anyway I can cure this affliction that hit my school of cherry barbs without antibiotics?

Thanks

 

[rrkss]

I've added an herbal remedy called melafix to the tank. I don't know if this will boost immune response but its worth a try.

 

[indiginess]

Anyway I can cure this affliction that hit my school of cherry barbs without antibiotics?

Thanks

fin rot is a fungus, and antiboitics will be ineffective. you are going to want to get a fungicide. if you have a QT, then i would use that, substituting daily partial water changes for a filter, unless you have a spare filter that would work. if you do, just take a little filter media out of the existing tank. shouldn't take much since non-eating cherry barbs aren't going to create a great deal of waste.

no need to stress the whole tank if you don't have to. luckily i've never had to deal with fin rot (knock on wood), so i'm not sure how 'contagious' it is. maybe treating the whole tank would be the safer route????

 

[Roan Art]

Why are you using salt + heat + maracide? That's way overkill. It's possible that your barbs are stressed out with that combination and it's affecting their health.

What day are you on with your ich treatment? It takes at least 14 days to fully erradicate them from your tank. This article has everything you need to know about treating and erradicating ich using salt + heat:

http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39759

As for tail rot, yes, tail rot is a fungus, but fungus are bacterial. Have you treated these fish with maracide before? Totally possible that your fungi bacteria are immune to maracide. Fugus is usually a symptom of some other problem.

I would suggest, after reading the ich article, that you add in your carbon to remove the maracide and change out your water -- at least 50%. Replace the salt and do not add any other medicines.

If you feel you *have* to use some sort of medication, then either use Melafix or a different anti-biotic.

Roan

 

[rrkss]

The aquaria is heavily planted so salt treatment is impossible. I have cured ich in my other tank with salt + heat successfully. This time I tried a small dose of salt to stimulate slime coat production and with heat and maracide, all traces of ich are gone. I doubt the fin rot is fungal since maracide contains malachite which would kill any form of fungi. My only problem with using a hospital tank is that my tap water is absolute crap containing both ammonia and nitrites and since I have CO2 injection changing out the fish to a hospital tank will cause a pH shock as the CO2 rapidly degasses which would occur too quickly since my hospital tank filter is an air driven box filter.

 

[Roan Art]

Maracide contains aniline green -- which is malachite green -- which can cause toxicity in catfish, loaches and tetras. The following fishes are also sensitive to malachite green: dwarf cichlids, gouramis, livebearers, and barbs. Previous is from the label warnings on a bottle of Malachite Green I have.

Sounds like your barbs are very sensitive to it. Have they been exposed before? I would put the carbon back in and remove it. Your tail rot will probably clear up once it's gone, since that's most likely secondary result of the malachite green effect.

Salt in low doses, such as we use for ich treatment, will not harm most aquatic plants. Unless yours are unusually sensitive using salt should be fine.

I've used salt for ich in my small planted tank with no ill effects. What plants do you have?

Roan

 

[rrkss]

I will then add carbon to the filter to take out the medication plus do a good water change this evening and vacuum the gravel. Maybe this will do the trick. The ich should not be comming back since it is day 3 since I last saw any traces of it and with the high temperature I had my tank at, the ich should have cycled and been killed by the malachite in the water. Thanks for the help.

 

[indiginess]

, but fungus are bacterial.
Roan

nope... fungi are not bacterial. fungi are eukaryotes, while bacteria are prokaryotes.

BIG difference.

 

[indiginess]

well, we were both right and wrong... fin rot is caused by an gram negative bacteria, not a fungus.

but fungi are not bacterial...

http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/disease/p/finrot.htm

 

[rrkss]

Actually fin rot can be caused by either a fungus or a gram negative bacterium. If its fungul fin rot, its very easy to cure by using a simple malachite green based medication or raising the salinity of the water. The bacterial version is what I am dealing with which I think is environmental related and hopefully by fixing the cause, my fish will get a strong immune response against it and get better.