Flesh Eating Parasite?

[AngelFishGirl]

Around this angel's mouth. Just got it two days ago. It's pairing. This is the male. It's full grown

 

[AngelFishGirl]

 

[AngelFishGirl]

Bump.... Is it okay to treat this with penicillin if he is alone?

 

[BBradbury]

Hello Angel...

Most, if not all tank problems are the result of less than pure water conditions. If you're not removing and replacing half the water in the tank every week or two, you should consider it. The more water you change and the more often you change it, the healthier the fish and plants. If you believe your fish has been infected, start an aggressive water change routine. Change out half the tank water every 3 to 4 days for a month and make the new water a bit warmer than that in the rest of the tank. Raise the tank temperature to 80 degrees, but no warmer. Plants don't tolerate higher heat.

Add a bit of standard aquarium salt. A teaspoon in every 5 gallons of new, treated tap water is sufficient. Most fish pathogens don't tolerate salt. The combination of warm, pure water, a little warmth and bit of salt is often enough to restore the fish to good health.

B

 

[AngelFishGirl]

Hello Angel...

Most, if not all tank problems are the result of less than pure water conditions. If you're not removing and replacing half the water in the tank every week or two, you should consider it. The more water you change and the more often you change it, the healthier the fish and plants. If you believe your fish has been infected, start an aggressive water change routine. Change out half the tank water every 3 to 4 days for a month and make the new water a bit warmer than that in the rest of the tank. Raise the tank temperature to 80 degrees, but no warmer. Plants don't tolerate higher heat.

Add a bit of standard aquarium salt. A teaspoon in every 5 gallons of new, treated tap water is sufficient. Most fish pathogens don't tolerate salt. The combination of warm, pure water, a little warmth and bit of salt is often enough to restore the fish to good health.

B

Thank you for your response. I came home yesterday to 3 DEAD ANGELS... My precious babies were dead... Panicking, my experienced friend's mom (aquarium keepers for years) came and took them for me. Having over 25 tanks, she was easily able to put them in their own 39 gallon tank. My other fish in the tanks (Gouramis, mollies, platy, tetras) were all not affected by anything - but they got their own tank too. She is keeping those ish permanently. I am converting to angel-only. Unable to do a water change last night due to my brother'a 3rd birthday, she came and took them to her house.
After a water change today (there is currently nothing but a red tailed shark and Cory cats in there)
She is bringing back my fish. There is only about 50% of the water in there (about 32 gallons) because of the transportation 5 gallon buckets that needed to be filled. I was gonna take out another 25% and then refill. Leaving it with about a 75% change. Water parameters are as follows:
Ammonia .50 (I have been stuck on .50 for over a month now. 50%,75% changes have not been able to bring it down. It was previously bare bottom, and added sand last week. Still no change.
Nitrite: 0 (and has always been)
Nitrate: 10-20

I added plants two days ago - some moss balls, amazon swords, ferns, anubias nana.... But I don't see that affecting fish enough for 3 angels to die. 2 were dead when I came home. Left for my brothers party, came back 4 hours later, my precious baby girl Gracie was dying. She was gasping heavily, clamped fins, laying on the bottom, getting stuck to the filter... She couldn't care less about the net when it touched her (to move her to my friend's house) and she died overnight.

Now the fish and his mate were added 2 days ago by the "local angelfish breeder of MN" he's the guy in MN who has thousands of dollars of just angelfish. Breeding altums and such.

He told me how when he was a kid, someone gave him a gift to help him start out his angel breeding experience. He wanted to do the same for me and gave me these for free 2 day after we started discussing them. (Original price was 50)
I never noticed anything on the lips of the boy, but it is possible in my excitement that I overlooked it. :/ could it have anything to do with that? Could he have brought in a disease? Or could a disease already have been lingering in the tank?

His mouth literally looks to have been eaten away.

Also, as some remember, there is a white substance on my angelfishes mouths (two of them - the two breeding ones) that was ID'd on here as Columnaris. After treating twice, nothing changed. Could it have been the medication that killed him? Or the Columnaris is strong and not affected and now it's killed my fish?
If it is Columnaris, it's been in my tank now for almost a week and a half. I thought Columnaris killed off all fish within 3-4 days.

So many questions! I'm sorry!

EDIT: the medication was Tetra's brand. I believe it's called Fungus Clear or Fungus Guard or something close to it. It was recommended to me to be used from people on this sight.

 

[BBradbury]

Water Chemistry

Hello again Angel...

Your post reads like you have an experienced water keeper helping you. Good. Medications are seldom the answer to supposed fish health problems. The meds can do more harm than good, from damaging plants to killing off the good bacteria that remove the forms of nitrogen like ammonia and nitrites that are toxic to aquarium fish.

Large water changes done frequently are the best thing you can do for your tank. There are no negative affects that result from having the tank water too clean.

Keep pluggin',

B

 

[bob mccoy]

show those pics to andy hun

 

[haleybeth30]

I'm sorry about your fish =( I'm keeping a sponge filter in my cycled tank to pull out and put in a qt when needed, for future reference. That way cycle/plants are unaffected. I think wcs keep disease away, but sometimes fish still get sick. If can't be treated with heat/salt then sometimes meds are necessary imo. Oh, and I think you got good advice on med to use. Unfortunately, by the time we see signs of a problem, sometimes fish is too far gone to save =(

 

[AngelFishGirl]

Thank you everyone. Melafix is seeming to clear everything up just fine, so seems like there's no need for any harsh chemicals!

 

[haleybeth30]

I've never known melafix to cure disease, but maybe it's not disease.. anyway, it's better and that's great!

 

[AngelFishGirl]

Might have happened during a temporary transport over to my friend's house in a 5 gallon bucket. I never noticed it until she took pictures from her tank. So maybe that was it. Melafix helped though. The mouth still looks banged up, but the redness is gone, and he is eating more aggressively than before.

 

[haleybeth30]

I think it could help with injury, again, glad he's better