Passatryde said:
ugh! it's like the more i research the more confused I am. I looked at the link you sent (which is great information by the way) and I totally convinced myself it was columnaris and not fungus related as I thought. It had to do with a couple things...1) it is also referred to as something like saddleback disease which is exactly where the original fish had the growth. 2) when i look really up close i can't see any "fibers" sticking out as the fungus description says.
I was so convinced that I ran down and picked up some triple sulfa (one of the recommended fixes - i chose it because it said it was easy on the aquarium environment and plants). I was totally shocked to see it was going to cost me $30 to treat with that by the way (55 gallon tank) - now i know why people have separate tanks to treat things - i seriously think I could buy a 10 gallon kit for the same price.
Anyway so i went online to see where I could buy it cheaper and i tripped upon another columnaris article and it said that with columnaris it'll kill the fish within 72 hours. So that totally threw me through another loop. I mean the original fish (the first two pics on this thread) i've had now for probably a month like that - and it's really not all that much worse off than it was when i got it.
So now i'm back to thinking it's fungus related....
maybe i'll go exchange the triple sulfate for some fungus treatment. I mean teh spots on teh others are increasing daily in number - but not size - and not at near the rate of ich - and they are much less defined than ich spots. the fin rot looks to be spreading pretty aggressive though - and the melafix and pimafix combination over the past week didn't stop it (in fact it wasn't there when i started that treatment).
Back to square one
so far the pic that best shows somethign similar to what the fish are exhibiting is the pic of that golden ram from teh badmans site under fungus.
Anyone know a good fungus treatment that isn't too hard on teh fish and safe for my plants?
You can do that too if you have a canister or inside the tank filter. Just make sure you have an accurate reading of gallons of water you are treating. (It might help save you some money.) Now you know why I used to do sensitivity cultures, you can't always get a proper diagnosis but the petrie dish never lies.
So there is a good news/bad news deal with this. The good news is that the bacterial infection (which would have most likely killed the fish) is gone whereas the fuzzys aren't. The sulpha drug appears to have worked on that. That's the good news.Update #2
I'm disappointed to say I just finished the triple sulfa treatment (went with that primarily based upon the recommendation from the site Andy provided because it was listed for both columnaris and fungus) and the white spots are still there and so is the lumpy/ fuzzy thing seen in the first two pics. The fin rot appears better (the edges aren't white anymore) but the spots are all still there. I'm about at my whits end now. I can't really do the peroxide treatment that mumma recommended because I can't catch the buggers and it's in multiple spots on three fishes do it would be practically impossible to do appropriately. I think I've spent double on meds than all my fish combined and it still exists.
. The fish are still alive which means you still have a fighting chance of making them better. Your job isn't done until the fish is cured or dead (and we are all trying to get that dead aspect to not happen) Think of it in human terms: how many times have you taken a medicine that didn't work but when you tried something else, it did? I have a LONGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG list of allergy meds that don't work for me but a very short list of ones that do. I had to go through all those other ones to find out which ones worked.
Before treating, contact the manufacturer and see what kind of reaction there is when mixing the 2 antibiotics. If they have a reaction, yes, do a water change. If they combine well, just do a small water change to freshen up the tank for now.
Passatryde said:
Andy Sager said:I hate to say it but the longer you wait, the better off you will be. Since we are still not 100% what the problem was, you can't tell what the effects are going to be on the other fish in the tank. I'd keep a close eye on them for a while and have some patients.
I'd also strongly suggest that as long as you now have a quarantine tank, make sure you use it for ANY new arrivals before putting them into the main tank.
(Yes at least a month in my eyes. ) . It will stop things from getting out of hand 
