Need some alternate medicines to treat Columnaris UPDATED

[grimlock3000]

Update: After three weeks in QT, my Tetra finally managed to have no signs of infection. The fish lost half of his mouth, and another fin, but finally started eating (which looks gross when you can see the fish's throat) and swimming around normally. In a painful twist, the heater in the tank died today, and that water was down to 66F when I realized it and checked, not my fish is swimming around with his head up I was using a $7 heater from Wal Mart, since it was the only think I could find that would fit.


I have had the white fuzzies slowly working its way through my 10g tank. Originally multiple fish showed possible signs, I lost one Tetra in QT, then everything was OK for a while after I treated the entire tank with Maracyn and Tetracycline. About a month after that, I lost one Dwarf Gourami, then another Dwarf Gourami. I tried treating the entire tank again for the Gouramis but it did not work. I am using a QT tank again, but everything dies in it. I lost a Catfish last night in QT, and I have another Tetra in QT since this morning. I do water changes in the 10g tank every week, only feed once a day, six times a week, have a bunch of Java Moss doing great in it, and have a Aquaclear Mini and a corner filter loaded up with floss for extra bio filtering. Water levels are 0/0/<20 for ammo/ites/ates in that 10g, temp is 80F. All of the Guppies are barely an inch long, so the bio load should not be too high. I catch the Colunaris early every time, on every fish.

In the QT tank, I up the salt, feed little (if anything), dose as directed, and do large water changes daily. Since the initial infection, every fish that has ever showed signs has ended up dead.

It finally dawned on me what might be going on. Since the first treatment, the strain of Columnaris leftover is immune to the medicines I use. That is the only thing I can think of. What are some other common medicines that people are using to treat Columnaris?

 

[Alivymar]

I grabbed this list from www.fish-disease.com: Furanace, Fungus Eliminator, Fungus Cure, Furacyn, Furan-2, Triple Sulfa, E.M. Tablets, Tetracycline, or Potassium Permanganate. Medicated foods are also recommended.

If they are still eating, I'd go with medicated food. You can make your own; one recipe is here: http://www.fishdoc.co.uk/treatments/medicatedfood.htm. There is also something called Medi-Koi, which is a medicated food for koi, but should be just as effective on other fish. Dunno where one can get it tho...you may have to search for it.

 

[tastybrains]

I recently had an outbreak of columnaris (secondary to the worm infestation - yuck!) It killed one gourami very rapidly, and a few days later (even though I was treating the entire tank with neomycin, which says on the package that it's effective for columnaris) I came home to find my second gourami clearly in distress -- lethargic with rotting fins and the telltale white patch.

I went back to the LFS and got Kanacyn (kanamycin sulfate) and added the FULL dose of about 1/3 capsule all at once (instead of over 5 days) to a 1-gallon bowl. I put the gourami in there, almost positive she would be dead within hours. But after a few days she began mending, and now (a week later) she's eating ravenously again, and is just about ready to rejoin the tank.

I don't know why certain medications (like neomycin, as I mentioned) claim to be effective against columnaris. According to an article that I read (http://article.dphnet.com/cat-02/columnaries.shtml) many common medications are not really very good at treating it.

Anyway, check out that article. There is information on MIC (minimum inhibitory concentration) of columnaris with different antibiotics. Quite informative.

Again, I had great results with kanamycin. I'm sure that my fish would have died horribly like her tankmate did if not for the treatment. Incidentally, as a further bonus for this drug, I think I've heard somewhere (can't say where specifically) that kanacyn is absorbed into the fish's bloodstream from the water much more easily than many other antibiotics. That's important if your fish won't eat!

P.S. You called it the "fuzzies" ... are you completely sure it's bacterial?

 

[grimlock3000]

It should definitely be Columnaris, it starts with skin sores, and then becomes white and cotton like.

I bought some Kanacyn last night before you posted about it, so it looks like I got something that might work. My QT is a 1g tank with a UGF filter which does nothing except move the water around. I only put in 10% of the capsule last night, however I added a bit more after reading your post this morning. I was going to try soaking medicine into food, and then drying it but the fish does not eat anyway.

I need a mini heater too. The temp in the QT tank is only 73F since the room temps have drasitcally gone down since I set it up. I leave the light on in the QT tank to keep the temp at that 73F setting. I think the fish would be less stressed if it was warmer and the lights went out at night 8)

 

[grimlock3000]

Well, this isn't going so well. My Tetra's mouth is just about half rotted away and the Columnaris is hoilding steady. I upped the does of Kanacyn that is going into the tank in hopes that will start to make progress. This Tetra is missing three entire fins from getting beat up, I hope he makes it, he has been doing great for a while even with just a few fins.

 

[Allivymar]

Dammit.

I came across this article on Columnaris. Its likely you are doing everything mentioned in it, but I'm posting it anyway in hopes there is something else in there that might help: http://www.aquamaniacs.net/flex.html

 

[grimlock3000]

Hrmm, that got me thinking it could be what my fish has until I got to the temp part. My Tetra is swimming around in 72.5-74 degree water, and the flexibacter needs to be in the 76+ range to spread. My fish still eats as well (somehow), so the fish probably has something else.

I just vac'd the entire gravel bed twice in a row with 50% water changes, and put about 1/2 capsule of Kanacyn in the tank (5x the reccomended dose). I always keep thinking that if the fish makes it one more day he will be fine. With his mouth doing really bad, he would not be able to eat if it gets any worse. At this point, he might not have one more day if so some drastic antibiotics are all I have left to try. I also have a blanket around the tank, to try and keep the heat in since I was unable to find a heater that went into this tank. If low temps doe not work, maybe high temps will help.

I had a nightmare of an experience trying to euthanize my catfish last week, so I do not know what I am going to do if I am stuck with a living fish with no bottom jaw,

I am not going to be too worred if this fish dies, only because I am surprised he made it this long without those fins. It usually really bothers me when fish die after I try to save them. They should make support groups for people with sick fish

 

[i3k]

I had one large Gourami that had this disease before...and nothing would help...it didn't infect other fish and it was spreading very slowly on that one large gourami...I finally went and bought some anti-biotics...got some Maracyn Two tablets and started treatment. Maracyn kind of helped but not a lot...after a 5 day treatment it almost looked as if the white fuzz cotton wool looking stuff was almost gone...two days later it came back...so what i did is change about 50% of water and started aquari-sol treatment...5 days later all the fuzz on the body was gone and the fish has completely recovered and is now healthy swimming and eating. I guess the anti-biotic treatment has weakened the disease and aquari-sol finished it off...by the way, the large gourami was treated in a separate tank.

 

[grimlock3000]

9 days later and my Tetra is still alive He has lost half of one side of his mouth and the infection appears to just now be going away. If the infection spreads to the other side, I will have to eutahnize the fish because it will not be able to eat without a jaw.

I think the trick is, do not follow the reccomended dosing and then divide it by your tank size for tiny tanks. I think this is OK to start, but the medicine runs out too fast. My QT tank is 1g, so I was only putting in 1/10th a capsule of medicine each dose. It was only when I start dosing 1/3 and 1/2 the capsule at a time that I finally started getting results.

 

[sweetsuvvyb]

The dosing guidelines are probably not the most well calculated to begin with, since there are a lot of factors that they'd have to kind of swallow into that guideline, such as the size + metabolic rate of the fish (the latter of which is going to be somewhat dependant on the temperature of the tank, not to mention how sick it is).

It's also true that if you have a very virulent strain of bacteria, it may exhibit signs of resistance to one or more types of bacteria (this can happen with lots of parasites actually)...which is why you generally want to go in, hit 'em with a high dose, and maintain that dose level until after your fish have improved. It sucks that there's so much guesswork involved.

I hope your lil guy gets better...

 

[Allivymar]

I'm dealing with the same thing here grimmie.

One of the new rams I got the other day came down with an EXTREMELY virulent form of columnaris. Went from the first sign of illness to dead in around 12-18 hours. *sigh*

So I'm treating the entire tank with Furan 2. I couldn't find acriflavin, oxytetracycline or Kanacyn, and I did read the furans can be effective against columnaris as they are effective against gram negative bacteria. Columnaris is a gram negative bacteria, so if I've diagnosed correctly, I should be able to keep the rest of the tank from keeling over...hopefully LOL

And as a side note, the reason the Maracyn didn't work well i3k, is because its effective against gram POSITIVE bacteria. So it really doesnt do much for columnaris.

 

[sweetsuvvyb]

FYI, this website can be really useful in sorting out some of the antibiotic mess...you can do a search on a generic drug name, and it'll give you the specific drug action (inc. what it's effective on).

http://www.rxlist.com


I do believe somebody (ahem, alli) should write a little article on aquarium meds...

 

[Allivymar]

*starts laughing*

I definitely don't have a handle on fish meds the way I do on treating ich. There's so much conflicting info out there, and I'm just starting to muddle my way thru it. For example, Maracyn is recommended for Columnaris; but as I mentioned before, columnaris is gram negative, and Maracyn treats gram positive. Good thing I went and did a buncha research before deciding on a treatment. I have Maracyn in the house; it would have sucked to have tried to treat em with it.

Btw, Mr502go gave me this great URL: http://www.noahspets.com/manufact.html . Its a list of active ingredients (meds), manufacturers and which of their products contain those meds. Could be great to use in combination with the url you just gave us sweets

 

[sweetsuvvyb]

It's kind of tricky....because gram pos/neg is only one distinction between bacteria...and sometimes the way the drug works is independant of it's gram status. It's certainly enough to make your head spin (well, enough to make my head spin...and I'm lucky enough to have a bookshelf full of textbooks on micro and molecular biology!)

I've been one lucky dog in that the only thing I've had to treat in my tank is a beat up oranda...definitely had given me pause each time I think about upgrading my tank or adding something new (why mess with a mostly good thing? lol)

 

[Allivymar]

LOL and you thought *I* might write a med article? LOL Sounds like you have much more, and much better knowledge then me! *hint hint*

 

[sweetsuvvyb]

but *I* don't have any actual hands-on experience in this arena...so

maybe we should make this a group effort LOL