Help with fin rot!

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Andremr

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Oct 12, 2016
Messages
7
Hi guys. I'm having troubles with fin rot. I would say 30% of the fishes have it but they seem ok, swimming and eating as per usual. Some of their fins are just missing and some has part of it missing with the edge being white.

135lt fish tank

1 x peppermint brittlenose (4cm)
3 x kuhli loaches (4cm)
2 x platis
6 x male endlers guppy
17 x neon
1 x algae eater
4 x bumblebee gobby
+ 25 platis/guppy fries

Lots of plants

Ph 7.2 / Ammonia 0ppm / Nitrite 0ppm / Nitrate 0ppm / 24.5-26º

27lt water replacement twice a week

I got this fish tank 3 months ago. I had some guppy and platis couples but got annoyed with the high number of fries so I took back to the shop all the females. I just could get the Nitrite to 0 ten days ago when I replaced the pump from 1000l/h to 2000l/h. The tank has those filters on the top that goes across. With the new pump I could spread the water better over the media which helped with the nitrite. So my problem is many of my fishes have fin rot. Around 1.5 month ago I tried to cure them with melafix and pimafix and multicure but no positive results because in my opinion due the nitrite(0.25ppm sometimes 0.5ppm) and ammonia (0.25ppm). So the water has been fine for over 10 days, everything at 0ppm but the fishes still have fin rot. I added yesterday the 1/2 of the dosage(due to the loaches and others) of multi cure again with one tablespoon of aquarium salt. What should I do next?

Thanks in advance
 
At this point, i would consider spending $10 on medicated flake feed. You have to buy at least two, and the 3oz pouches are more than enough to last you for years. (they are big pouches)
Antibiotic Fish Flake Food
Either one will work, and you could pick up some spirulana or brine shirmp flake or other high quality flake while your at it. Im not advertising, just giving you the info you need.
Feed every 6 hours for 8-10 days.
 
At this point, i would consider spending $10 on medicated flake feed. You have to buy at least two, and the 3oz pouches are more than enough to last you for years. (they are big pouches)
Antibiotic Fish Flake Food
Either one will work, and you could pick up some spirulana or brine shirmp flake or other high quality flake while your at it. Im not advertising, just giving you the info you need.
Feed every 6 hours for 8-10 days.

Hi Matt,

Thanks for you advice. Unfortunately I'm from Australia and they don't ship to here.
 
Is the algae eater a Chinese Algae eater? These fish can be very aggressive and take scales off other fish, add your previously high parameters could have aggravated the issue.

As for treatment,
Lots of water changes, dilutes the bacteria and other infectious microbes as well as reduces any chemicals in the water that might inhibit healing. Given fin rot is bacterial in nature, drop the set temperature a couple degrees, will slow bacteria growth.

Continue your current tank treatment do after each water change.

Hopefully helps.


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Try methylene blue, in a seperate tank or tub, by itself, or along with whatever antibiotic you can find.
Do they have Furan2? (dont mix those two tho, but a antibiotic with M. Blue is ok)
Im really just guessing here, since you say "many' of them have it, im assuming its from putting them in a tank that was not cycled fully for a long period of time, and now a disease has taken a foothold. Unfortunately, without antibiotics, there may just not be any cure to fix them. If there is, it would be the methylene, as its listed for nitrite poisining.
ive heard of interpret no. 9 or something or other, not sure what that is, but you might try that as well.
 
Is the algae eater a Chinese Algae eater? These fish can be very aggressive and take scales off other fish, add your previously high parameters could have aggravated the issue.

As for treatment,
Lots of water changes, dilutes the bacteria and other infectious microbes as well as reduces any chemicals in the water that might inhibit healing. Given fin rot is bacterial in nature, drop the set temperature a couple degrees, will slow bacteria growth.

Continue your current tank treatment do after each water change.

Hopefully helps.


Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium Advice

Yes it is the chinese algae eater.... It seems to go along with the fishes, it just chases the platis when there is food in the tank. Besides that he doesn't annoy anyone else. I will drop the temperature. What would be good? 23 - 24º ?
 
Try methylene blue, in a seperate tank or tub, by itself, or along with whatever antibiotic you can find.
Do they have Furan2? (dont mix those two tho, but a antibiotic with M. Blue is ok)
Im really just guessing here, since you say "many' of them have it, im assuming its from putting them in a tank that was not cycled fully for a long period of time, and now a disease has taken a foothold. Unfortunately, without antibiotics, there may just not be any cure to fix them. If there is, it would be the methylene, as its listed for nitrite poisining.
ive heard of interpret no. 9 or something or other, not sure what that is, but you might try that as well.

The multicure I'm using at the moment has:
4.00mg/mL Methylene Blue
2.00mg/mL Acriflavine
0.40mg/mL Malachite Green

Can I somehow add antibiotics to their food? I don't have another tank to separate them since I live in a very small apartment.
 
You can and it's the best way to go. I was more concerned about the m. Blue. It kills all bavyetia. The same stuff used in toilet bowl cleaners

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So I did a 50% water change 4 days ago and 20% yesterday. I think I will keep doing 20% every second day until they are better. I have been adding 20ml of melafix daily and dropped the temperature to 24º. Also I've been soaking the food in water with tetracycline. The fishes look more active and the disease seems to have stopped spreading.

There is 2 table spoons of salt in the aquarium. Should I add more? I have loaches and a peppermint britlenose so I don't want to stress them with too much salt or even kill my plants.
 
So I did a 50% water change 4 days ago and 20% yesterday. I think I will keep doing 20% every second day until they are better. I have been adding 20ml of melafix daily and dropped the temperature to 24º. Also I've been soaking the food in water with tetracycline. The fishes look more active and the disease seems to have stopped spreading.



There is 2 table spoons of salt in the aquarium. Should I add more? I have loaches and a peppermint britlenose so I don't want to stress them with too much salt or even kill my plants.


Great to hear that you see signs of improvement.

I personally do not use salt in my tanks. I have done "salt baths" for individual fish to treat parasites (anchor worm). So not the right person to ask on if need to add more salt lol.

What I will add, after you are done treating your tank with the antibiotics you should continue with more regular water changes than you were doing before. Antibiotics don't just pick out the bad bacteria they also can kill your bb and cause your tank to have a mini cycle. So keep an eye on your ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate for a few weeks after you end treatment. If this happens perhaps a bottle of API quick start or seachem stability may quicken the end of it.


Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium Advice
 
Great to hear that you see signs of improvement.

I personally do not use salt in my tanks. I have done "salt baths" for individual fish to treat parasites (anchor worm). So not the right person to ask on if need to add more salt lol.

What I will add, after you are done treating your tank with the antibiotics you should continue with more regular water changes than you were doing before. Antibiotics don't just pick out the bad bacteria they also can kill your bb and cause your tank to have a mini cycle. So keep an eye on your ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate for a few weeks after you end treatment. If this happens perhaps a bottle of API quick start or seachem stability may quicken the end of it.


Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium Advice

yeah the platis and guppies look much better. Most of them have the tail grown back.

The neons are still the same, I will just keep the treatment and hopefully they will show some improvement.
 
Is there another medicine I could add to their food?


You can also do probiotic food, this may help remove some of the pathogens from their digestive systems. Or add more live or frozen food. Anything that gives more vitamins or nutrients at once might give them more strength or fight off the infection.
Neons are sometimes a lot more sensitive to disease than other aquarium fish. So take longer to recover.

Found this link while looking for medicated food was a pretty good read.

http://www.hikariusa.com/articles/medicated-feed/
 
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