Red Tail Shark diagnosis help, possibly gill flukes

[Tahl]

I currently have 3 fish in a 29 gallon quarantine tank and the only one showing any signs of sickness are the red tailed shark. Her symptoms include flashing, red gills with white bubbles on the gills. My question now is, what is this and what can I do to treat it?

Water parameters are:
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - A little (I don't have the chart with me, but it's close to zero)

I dosed melafix two days ago for a white fungus on her tail before noticing her gills like this yesterday and did a water change to try and get some of the medicine out incase she wasn't handling it well.

 

[reefdiver]

youdo knw that rts have white spots on there fins. I have one with two white spots. Did the research and found out it was natural. what other fish you got in the tank?

 

[Tahl]

youdo knw that rts have white spots on there fins. I have one with two white spots. Did the research and found out it was natural. what other fish you got in the tank?

Nope I didn't know that, that would explain what I thought was the start of a fungus though. The other two fish in there are a gold gourami and a rubber lip pleco.

edit: I attached a picture, not sure if you can tell from the picture but the whole head is discolored. She still has her appetite though.

 

[i3k]

It has bubbles on the gills? like literally air bubbles? or tiny grain like white dots?

how long has the tank been setup? what kind of test kit are you using? strips or liquid?

constant flashing is usually a sign of irritation...ich surely can drive a fish mad and so can ammonia...but you said ammonia is at 0. look at the fish from up close and see if there are any tiny white spots on the fish's body or fins. That would be ich.

 

[Tahl]

I'm using the API liquid test kit. The gills seem to have little white air bubble sized growths which doesn't look at all like ich that I have treated on other fish. It just seems to be affecting just the fish's head though and not the rest of her body.

The tank was fishless cycling before that for probably a month and a half or longer.

 

[i3k]

Sounds like bacterial infection. I wouldn't trust melafix with bacterial infection. You'll need something like Maracyn-two. Also, keep your water as clean as possible. This means increased water changes.

 

[Tahl]

The only thing my pet store has for a bacterial treatment is Tetra Lifeguard, which seems to be a broad range treatment. I'm not sure exactly how well it will work though. The red-tailed shark hasn't gotten worse in condition at all or lost her appetite yet, so this medication may be working.

 

[Tahl]

Just an update, she seems to have got almost all of her color back and is acting a lot better. The only thing that she is still doing now is flashing, which is possibly due to the fact that the nitrite spiked during the medicine treatment.

 

[i3k]

Have you tested for ammonia lately? if she's flashing often, something is irritating her...ich/ammonia/velvet are all possibilities. Remember, fish get attacked by ich when they are stressed out and become vulnerable. Since your fish was fighting off another disease, it's quiet possible that it now has ich because of the stress caused by the previous disease.

 

[Tahl]

The ammonia is still cycling over to nitrite, but it is stalling at the nitrite stage since the medicine treatment. I am fairly sure she did develop ich though at the end stage of the medication treatment. I noticed the gold gourami flashing too, but I never saw ich on him. I was wondering if it was nitrite poisoning that may have caused them irritation.