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?