On Tuesday of last week, I noticed a small, flesh-colored patch on one of my loaches' heads. (Not his flesh color, like human flesh color.) Being the fish hypochondriac that I am, I spent a couple hours online poring over disease info. and also forced my boyfriend to stare into the tank with me everytime he walked into the room. My boyfriend and loaches.com both convinced me I was being paranoid, but just to be safe, I decided to put Geltek tetracycline on the loaches' pellets for the next several days. (My primary concern was columnaris.)
There are several things to note here:
1) After nitrites persisting at very low levels (.25ish) for a couple weeks, the mini cycle the tank was experiencing finally ended a couple weeks ago, so nitrAtes were still spiking around this time. I had been doing frequent water changes but then my boyfriend's mom came to visit and I didn't get to change it for several days. NitrAtes could very well have gone over 40ppm. After noticing the loaches' spot, I did around a 50% change every day for the next three days, and then one every other day up until Monday, as nitrates are now remaining steady at around 10.
2) The heater I had in the tank was called I think a UL Listed Aquarium Submersible heater or something like that, and labelled for tanks up to 60 gal. Don't ever buy one; it is a piece of ****. Even on its lowest setting, it would not maintain the temp of the tank any less than 82 degrees. I never knew much about columnaris, and always thought it was better to keep the tank warmer rather than cooler to avoid ich and other parasites so didn't worry too much about this at first.
3.) Everyone in the tank eats the loaches' pellets (or the crumbs they spray everywhere) so it is likely everyone was consuming some tetracycline.
Within another day or so after discovering the loach's spot, it disappeared and everyone was acting healthy. On Saturday, I noticed that one of the tetras had a patch of white between his eyes that extended down to his mouth. I freaked out again about columnaris, and immediately removed him to a QT tank where I dosed the water with Kanacyn. On Monday, a tetra that I had been keeping an eye on because her eyes were bulging (not popeye but definitely bulging) was hanging out by herself a lot and flashing and I removed her into the Kanacyn tank as well. Since Saturday, everyone in the main tank has been getting food soaked in the Geltek tetracycline, although they don't like it much and often spit it out repeatedly until (presumably) the Geltek flavor washes off.
On Monday afternoon, I finally got a new heater and lowered the temperature in the main tank to 77-8 degrees. I also fed the fish frozen blood worms soaked in Tetracycline hoping they would eat more of the medicine if it was on their favorite food. Then get this: Yesterday the tetras in the main tank start SPAWNING! There were about 4 or 5 tetras (2 males) involved in this over some plants and a rock on one side of the tank; a male would tremble like crazy beside or below a similarly trembling female. They often engage in this sort of beahvior and I wouldn't have thought it was actually spawning if Poldy (my angelfish) hadn't swum over and started going crazy squeezing himself under the plants and rock to eat stuff in the gravel, even though no food is ever dropped in this vicinity. Then the loaches came over and started doing the same thing and clicking like crazy, and I looked very closely and did notice a couple tiny white string like things and some cloudiness in the water beneath the tetras. This went on for about half an hour to an hour, and whenever one of the nearby tetras not engaged in the spawning swam nearby one of the males would chase her away, although they didn't dare chase Poldy or the loaches away because they are huge.
Anyway, I know this is off the subject of my unhealthy fish but it was very reassuring to me because I told myself that my fish couldn't be breeding if they're all infected with some terrible disease, right? The two in the QT tank are both rather inactive, but the first guy's white patch is disappearing and I attribute their inactivity to the meds in the water. The other one's eyes are still bulging, but she went in the QT tank later so is behind on one treatment. Patchy guy gets his last treatment tonight, and I hope to be able to put him back in the main tank on Friday. I plan to keep feeding the main tank the Geltek until Monday.
My main question is what on earth is going on? If this had been columnaris, then wouldn't it have overtaken the entire tank rapidly in a matter of days because I so foolishly left the temp so high? Could it have been the earliest stages of columnaris that I stopped with the water changes and Geltek and lowering the temp? Could it be something else I'm not thinking of? While I think the treatments I'm doing are working, I'm mainly just looking for ideas, reassurance, etc. My boyfriend is getting very sick of hearing about my fish concerns all the time.
EDIT: Another thing to note is that in the week after bringing the tetras back from the PETCO on February 23, we lost 3. Only one of them had any external symptoms and this was popeye. I attributed this to a disease from the pet shop and thought when a month passed without any more deaths, that we were out of the woods. Now, I am worrying that whatever disease there was from PETCO could still be infecting my fish. Are there any diseases with such a long incubation time? My main conern is TB; someone please tell me I'm being paranoid. I've also decided that I'm NEVER buying fish from PETCO again.
There are several things to note here:
1) After nitrites persisting at very low levels (.25ish) for a couple weeks, the mini cycle the tank was experiencing finally ended a couple weeks ago, so nitrAtes were still spiking around this time. I had been doing frequent water changes but then my boyfriend's mom came to visit and I didn't get to change it for several days. NitrAtes could very well have gone over 40ppm. After noticing the loaches' spot, I did around a 50% change every day for the next three days, and then one every other day up until Monday, as nitrates are now remaining steady at around 10.
2) The heater I had in the tank was called I think a UL Listed Aquarium Submersible heater or something like that, and labelled for tanks up to 60 gal. Don't ever buy one; it is a piece of ****. Even on its lowest setting, it would not maintain the temp of the tank any less than 82 degrees. I never knew much about columnaris, and always thought it was better to keep the tank warmer rather than cooler to avoid ich and other parasites so didn't worry too much about this at first.
3.) Everyone in the tank eats the loaches' pellets (or the crumbs they spray everywhere) so it is likely everyone was consuming some tetracycline.
Within another day or so after discovering the loach's spot, it disappeared and everyone was acting healthy. On Saturday, I noticed that one of the tetras had a patch of white between his eyes that extended down to his mouth. I freaked out again about columnaris, and immediately removed him to a QT tank where I dosed the water with Kanacyn. On Monday, a tetra that I had been keeping an eye on because her eyes were bulging (not popeye but definitely bulging) was hanging out by herself a lot and flashing and I removed her into the Kanacyn tank as well. Since Saturday, everyone in the main tank has been getting food soaked in the Geltek tetracycline, although they don't like it much and often spit it out repeatedly until (presumably) the Geltek flavor washes off.
On Monday afternoon, I finally got a new heater and lowered the temperature in the main tank to 77-8 degrees. I also fed the fish frozen blood worms soaked in Tetracycline hoping they would eat more of the medicine if it was on their favorite food. Then get this: Yesterday the tetras in the main tank start SPAWNING! There were about 4 or 5 tetras (2 males) involved in this over some plants and a rock on one side of the tank; a male would tremble like crazy beside or below a similarly trembling female. They often engage in this sort of beahvior and I wouldn't have thought it was actually spawning if Poldy (my angelfish) hadn't swum over and started going crazy squeezing himself under the plants and rock to eat stuff in the gravel, even though no food is ever dropped in this vicinity. Then the loaches came over and started doing the same thing and clicking like crazy, and I looked very closely and did notice a couple tiny white string like things and some cloudiness in the water beneath the tetras. This went on for about half an hour to an hour, and whenever one of the nearby tetras not engaged in the spawning swam nearby one of the males would chase her away, although they didn't dare chase Poldy or the loaches away because they are huge.
Anyway, I know this is off the subject of my unhealthy fish but it was very reassuring to me because I told myself that my fish couldn't be breeding if they're all infected with some terrible disease, right? The two in the QT tank are both rather inactive, but the first guy's white patch is disappearing and I attribute their inactivity to the meds in the water. The other one's eyes are still bulging, but she went in the QT tank later so is behind on one treatment. Patchy guy gets his last treatment tonight, and I hope to be able to put him back in the main tank on Friday. I plan to keep feeding the main tank the Geltek until Monday.
My main question is what on earth is going on? If this had been columnaris, then wouldn't it have overtaken the entire tank rapidly in a matter of days because I so foolishly left the temp so high? Could it have been the earliest stages of columnaris that I stopped with the water changes and Geltek and lowering the temp? Could it be something else I'm not thinking of? While I think the treatments I'm doing are working, I'm mainly just looking for ideas, reassurance, etc. My boyfriend is getting very sick of hearing about my fish concerns all the time.
EDIT: Another thing to note is that in the week after bringing the tetras back from the PETCO on February 23, we lost 3. Only one of them had any external symptoms and this was popeye. I attributed this to a disease from the pet shop and thought when a month passed without any more deaths, that we were out of the woods. Now, I am worrying that whatever disease there was from PETCO could still be infecting my fish. Are there any diseases with such a long incubation time? My main conern is TB; someone please tell me I'm being paranoid. I've also decided that I'm NEVER buying fish from PETCO again.
I'm not sure if it was bloat or maybe dropsy caused by a bacterial infection. The guy who had the whitish patch on his head/face is still in QT but very active and the patch is pretty much gone, but there are some places where it was formerly that are now a little red/ pink. If this was columnaris, which I still don't know, how do I know when he's no longer contagious? Should I keep him in QT until his skin has healed completely? I seem to have managed to treat any sort of bacterial infection he may have had (if so, yay! My first fully successful fish treatment) but don't want to put him back into the main tank until I'm sure he won't contaminate my other fish. It's really freaking him out to be in QT though; he obviously misses his friends and chases his reflection rather frantically, then flies into hiding whenever I approach. Because of this, he's been difficult to feed, but we've worked out a system where I drop some betta pellets into the water and move away, and then he usually eats a couple as they start to sink to the bottom. 
