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Hi everyone,

I have a problem in my tank that is proving to be quite difficult to eliminate. It seems to be targeting Green horseface, which show signs of respiratory distress, and have patches of milky whitedness along their body and fins.... I think that it may be velvet disease, costia or chilodonella, but am not too sure.

I have tried seperating the infected individuals into a seperate tank, and treating them with Pimafix, Malachite Green, and methylene blue, and even salt water baths, but with no success. The treatment has lasted just over a week now. One of my largest fish has now showed symptoms, and have no idea how to combat the infection.

Has anybody had a similar problem and successfully treated it???

Help Please,
DW

OK, when you say patches, can you see individual specs on the fish? because even with the smaller protozoans, they have quite a distinctive appearance and once you see it, you will know.

from your description it actually sounds slightly more like a bacterial infection than a protozoan infection.

Have a really close look at the fish, especially on the fins, around the eyes, and on the edges of the scales. these are the areas most accessable for protozoans and the areas where they show up first.

Are you dosing straight meth blue and mal green or is it a mix like multicure or something?

what doserate have you been using?

are you running a UGF or a filter with carbon?

What is the make and model of your filter, the size of your tank, and how often do you do waterchanges?

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

The tank is a 4ft by 18' by 18'.
I have an UGF with two powerheads on the uplift tubes,
and an OTTO external canister filter with a flow rate of 450lph.

I have tried using multicure, and fugus cure, both which contain acriflavine and either methylene blue or malachite green. Both treatments have been dosed at 40mls every 3 days. Not at the same time though.

The temperature has been turned up to 30+degrees.
The patches on the fish are not spots so mutch as whole sections of fish that the cloudiness is covering, and the most heavily infected fish have bulging eyes, are not eating and clasp their pelvic and pectoral fins tightly to their bodies.......

the bulging yes does suggest a secondary bacterial infection, which is not suprising becasue they are in [pretty bad shape, still alive though.

thanks for your reply, any further help would be much appreciated.

unless you are sure its ich, turn the heat DOWN as the higher temperatures will encourage faster growth of whatever organism is infecting your fish. Drop it about 1*C every 6 hours until you have it at about 28-29*C.

I'll assume your water is pretty heavily dosed, but that the dye has all but disappeared?

the ugf somehow manages to such a lot of the meds out, just the large amount of biological matter inactivates a good deal of the drug over a period of 24 hours.

If the colour in your water is minimal, try keeping up your ammonia and nitrite tests, because those meds tend to halt the growth of your biofilters.

IMO its time to try something stronger. If you are pretty convinced that it is a protozoan, (though to be honest, i think that if it was, it would be very very obvious by now with the heat all the way up)try TriSulfa tablets. these are an old style medication that is generally regarded as an antibacterial but is often used for prpotozoan infection or when there is a secondary infection involved.

Failing that, tetracycline would be my next choice, or if not that, Myxazin.

have you googled protozoan infections? if you hit the IMAGES tag you can see many different examples.

From your discription, I honestly think that you are dealing with something bacterial. Or at the very least, a secondary infection has now become your primary concern.

If these fish are worth the money/hassle, you can always go and get a skin scrape done at your local vet for about $70 to find out exactly what it is and how to kill it.


For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett