Columnaris treatments

[Mebbid]

My household seems to have had a rather nasty Columnaris outbreak. While my room mate has lost almost all of her breeding stock of bettas it seems to have just cropped up in my 55g community tank and I am seeing the white lips signs on some of my guppies. Thankfully it hasn't made it to my cichlid tank as of yet but we will see about that.

After I stepped in and helped my room mate treat her bettas with Tetracycline which worked amazingly well I am now faced with a dilemma of trying to treat a potential outbreak in at least 30 fish and possibly up to around 100 if all the tanks end up catching it. Treating that many fish is for the most part impossible with using tetracycline, both in practicality and cost.

I went to both of the two dedicated fish stores in my city and both of them Suggested Metronidazole for treatment of columnaris. While I wasn't surprised that the first guy told me that because that's what he suggests for everything, I was really surprised that the second guy told me the same since he's been in the aquarium trade for 30 years. I ended up buying some food that was medicated with Metronidazole to give it a try but I was wondering what you guys would suggest for broad range treatments.

Would a DIY tetracycline food be a good option? If so what would be the best way to make it?

Ive also read about Potassium Permanganate, salt, methylene blue, and hyrdogen peroxide dips as having some effectiveness on it but it seems that would only treat the symptoms and they would just end up catching it again when they went back in the DT tank.

There are also possible issues arising from me having a heavily planted DT with a huge number of inverts and a few scale less fish.

 

[Matt68005]

I raise guppies the past 5 years. I deal with and read alot about this disease. You should buy a brand new ten gallon and hook it up with just an airstone as a hospital tank. Treat with a combination of kanamycin sulfate and furan-2 doing small water changes between doses. Do not feed keep the new tank room temp and spotless clean. I also use oxytetracycline medicated food as a preventative wheen dealing with new or stressed fish. This treatment is for hard/alkaline water ( or saltwater) and it works. Lfs people dont know diddly squat they just dispose of fish that die. Tetracycline dosent really work and metrazidole or whatever is for parasites. What idiots. You can trust my advice as i kmow it works. Continue treatments for 6-7 days. If you have soft/acidic water you can use a maracyn 1/2 combo and the feed. I get my stuff from kensfish.com. the feed is 1.75 a pound and the antibiotics are 5.75 each but you will have to pay shipping. Not every fish can be saved from these terrible diseases but if you do as i said you should save most if them. Also look up flexibacter columnaris, areanomas and peusedonomas infections in fish as its usually these two bacteria not just flex hence the reason for the combo.

 

[Mebbid]

I raise guppies the past 5 years. I deal with and read alot about this disease. You should buy a brand new ten gallon and hook it up with just an airstone as a hospital tank. Treat with a combination of kanamycin sulfate and furan-2 doing small water changes between doses. Do not feed keep the new tank room temp and spotless clean. I also use oxytetracycline medicated food as a preventative wheen dealing with new or stressed fish. This treatment is for hard/alkaline water ( or saltwater) and it works. Lfs people dont know diddly squat they just dispose of fish that die. Tetracycline dosent really work and metrazidole or whatever is for parasites. What idiots. You can trust my advice as i kmow it works. Continue treatments for 6-7 days. If you have soft/acidic water you can use a maracyn 1/2 combo and the feed. I get my stuff from kensfish.com. the feed is 1.75 a pound and the antibiotics are 5.75 each but you will have to pay shipping. Not every fish can be saved from these terrible diseases but if you do as i said you should save most if them. Also look up flexibacter columnaris, areanomas and peusedonomas infections in fish as its usually these two bacteria not just flex hence the reason for the combo.

While I agree wholeheartedly about LFS not knowing squat, I generally trust the information given to me by at least one of the stores I go to. They both do nothing but sell fish for a living and generally have incredibly healthy tanks. Friday I was in the shop and he turned a lady away from around $200 in saltwater sales to suggest she go and get her reef aquarium levels straightened out before adding any livestock.

I've been reading up more about metronidazole and it seems that while it was originally made for treatment of protozoans for humans it is also a good antibacterial agent which apparently is used today to treat a bunch of bacterial issues in people. I'll keep trying the metronidazole until my shipment of stuff food from Ken's gets here.

While I have no issue whatsoever of setting up a 10g hospital tank, I would need dozens of them to house all the fish if the infection keeps spreading but thankfully the tanks that haven't noticeably caught anything yet have their own maintenance equipment so it shouldn't spread any further

 

[Matt68005]

Cool beans. Be careful with the nitrofurazone its a carocigen and the kanamycin is a small nottle so if you have big tanks its more economical to use hospital tanks. Also important to reduce or stop feed and keep the water clean and use for a full course of 7 days. I have had it go away in 3-4 days then come back if i stopped treatment. I would also increase aeration and turn off heater. Meds lower o2 in water and cool water retards growth if bacteria. Also can add aquarium salt 2 tbsp per ten gallons to help gill function