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Hi Guys..
I got a couple of sailfin mollies for my community tank last week & they did a hell of a job of cleaning up the brown algae (diatoms) that I had in my tank after I had added some new gravel a month or so ago. But,two days after I introduced them to the tank I noticed the male had a swollen lower lip & some white tufty thread like substance hanging from it. From reading REDPHANTOM's thread I assumed that it may be columnaris,so,I went to the LFS to get some meds& they gave me an Australian made product called Fungus-ade.It contains Malachite green,Formaldehyde,Dehydroabietylamine acetate & Acriflavine. They told me to treat it immediately & again in 4 days time & also to increase the temp to 30deg C .
They also thought it may have been caused by the stress of bagging & transporting. I was wondering if he may have hurt himself in his frantic cleaning of the tank ?
At this stage none of the other members are showing any signs & as far as he is going he doesn't appear overly distressed...certainly hasn't stopped him from trying to have his way with the female every few minutes !
As I'm never too sure about what the LFS suggests, I thought I would ask my more learned colleagues what they thought.
My tank parameters at the moment are:
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 10ppm
ph 7.2
normal water temp 26 deg C.
Thanks....Ash

"if you're goin swimmin,watch out for the noahs"

The meds they have given you are primarily for fungus, although if the columnaris is caught very early the meds might have some effect. Flexibacter columnaris is a bacterium. Raising the temperature with either complaint has no effect,increasing the fishs' metabolism will not increase its resistance to either complaint, and both ailments are also able to live in water conditions far more extreme than your fish can take, so you might as well avoid the stress on the fish and not bother.
Treatments are listed in the disease profiles. I wrote them up after redphantom had his problems for easy reference.

Still, hopefully the antifungals will do the job. Thankfully fungus is more common than columnaris,and it is almost impossible to tell the two apart in the early stages.

Thanks git...
His lip does seem to be improving....I checked most of the local internet LFS sites for Furan but couldn't find a mention of it . I did find protozin available on interstate websites but not sure if it is available locally. I will ring around tomorrow. Getting it from interstate would take 2 or 3 days to arrive. Would you suggest I chase some up or wait & see how he goes?
Thanks...Ash

"if you're goin swimmin,watch out for the noahs"

If it were me id be paranoid enough to source some furan, but if the lip is already responding well you probably wont need to, and what you have is probably fungus.

Better safe than sorry. Id rather waste $10 than not have the meds if I needed them. Depends on your cashflow situation.

Thanks git...
He's looking a lot better,so,yeh probably was fungal.
I will try to find someone who stocks Furan just in case.
Just wondering tho, I assume that Furan is an antibiotic & that I would need to use a hospital tank ? I don't have a spare tank at the moment,so, I might have to get a 10gal to use as a hospital/quarantine tank. Ash

"if you're goin swimmin,watch out for the noahs"

If you can maintain a seperate and preferably cycled quarantine tank its always a great idea. If you can afford it, do it! Mine has saved the lives of many fish. Furan can affect filter bacteria so a seperate qt is a good idea. In reds case I recommended he treat his main tanks because so may of his fish were affected it would have got silly putting them all into quarantine.

Quarantine is what it says on the tin, useful only if there is only one or a few affected fish, and if youve caught the condition early enough for them all not to be affected anyway. With the truly contagious conditions , quarantine on existing community fish is usually a waste of time, but its always worth it for new acquisitions.