Guppies fungus?? Pics

[OSUOKC79]

Just want some help determining what this actually is. It starts at their lips and spreads rapidly, within hours, across the head and eyes, leading to death within 24 hours. It is contagious, a guppy with no symptoms bought from a different store two weeks before now shows symptoms. Only symptoms are on the lips and head.

These are plan fancy guppy females, so far the males have not shown symptoms. Neons are no affected and haven't shown symptoms thru many guppy deaths

10 gal tank, 2 years old
Ammonia & nitrites 0, nitrates 50ppm ph 7.2-7.6 all stable for a long time
Cascade medium canister (the one with 2 baskets)
20-25% water change weekly vacuuming what I can around plants.
Nothing new in the tank, besides the guppies. I've seen this before in guppies but haven't figured out what it is or how to treat it.
They get flake food, and live baby brine shrimp

Any ideas? Treatments? I have tried mecalite green and salt dips, tank is salted with pimifix, not slowing it down.

 

[Delapool]

Is it eating into the skin? I'm wondering if it could be cotton mouth (bacterial infection) since the MG isn't working.

Just checking but not running carbon, just in case it is powder coated on somewhere in filter pads.

Something else is the MG could be getting soaked up by a high level of organics in the tank. Tank nitrates look a little high (particularly with a tank infection at the moment) so I would increase the pwc's. I usually suggest more pwc's anyways as that will help. A canister filter clean (in tank water to keep bb) I've found to be very effective to drop nitrates.

 

[OSUOKC79]

The MG was in a 30 minute dip/bath with salt, the tank has lots of cherry shrimp and I didn't want to risk them with any treatments, I've already stressed them enough salting and adding melafix and pimafix to the tank. ( amazingly they seem to be doing fine ) I also tried a dip with potassium permanganate and salt, no luck their either.

FORGOT, this tank is the only one that I run a UV Sterilizer on, it's inline on the canister, less than 6 months old.

My nitrates have always run very high in every tank, even with twice weekly water changes. I've tested my tap water and it's not high in nitrates. I never use carbon in my filters.

I set up a 2.5 gallon tank today that I plan on using as a nursery tank, I took bio media from by 55 gal's big canister and set up my new filter for it. The guppies I bought yesterday all went into my 55 gal, after I made sure the gouramis and buenos aires tetras wouldn't mess with them.

I think I'm going to leave this tank free of guppies for a good while. And make sure nothing in it gets transferred to the other 4 tanks. And no matter how pretty they look, I'm not buying anymore guppies from petsmart. It seems no matter which petsmart I buy guppies from they all end the same way. I found a local LFS that gets all their guppies from a local breeder, and I'm hoping they will be healthier, and by that better able to resist disease.

I would like to nail down this disease and be ready and able to treat for it if it comes up again. I've considered both Columnaris (Flexibacteria) which is a gram negative bacteria, and SAPROLEGNIA (Fungus). I have some Kanaplax (kanamycin), Furan - 2, and methylene blue coming from amazon. Unfortunately I had already ordered it all before I found the new LFS, that carries it all, only store I've found that carries more than things like tetracycline, minocycline, or standard ich treatments.

I've looked at pictures all over the internet and found very few that come close to what I'm seeing.

 

[Delapool]

That's a great lfs as the products you mention are basically all that mines carries. I've just had a order of kanaplex and furan 2 come in (hopefully not needed but ready for next summer). I've had some luck with tri-sulpha if the cotton mouth (columnaris) is caught very early.

Nitrates I've found tend to go down with filter cleans. It sounds like mine where the water changes just keep a holding pattern. I wouldn't say the nitrates are the cause or anything but it would be nice to have them a bit lower. It all helps but up to you.

My experience has been that the bacterial infections are the ones that have all sorts of odd signs (unless you are unlucky and have both). The melafix and pimafix I find ok for keeping wounds clean or if a fish is off but unable to cope with high level infections.

You could also try dropping the temperature down below 77F or 25C as that should slow down infections. I think if you tried the fungal treatments and no luck, then onto bacterial infections.

UV filters - well it's hard to say. The one I have was expensive (but everything is here) and is a separate unit (so I don't need to worry the flow rate is too high). I find it helps water clarity and may help with infections but I've still had ich, bacterial and fungal go through the tank. I intend to stick with it just in case things could be worse.

 

[OSUOKC79]

I noticed some of the guppies in my big tank showing the first symptoms, since none of the meds I ordered are here yet, I tried swabbing their mouth with full strength potassium permanganate. So far, it seems to have done the trick! Normally when I first notice a few white spots it only takes 1-2 hours and it's almost covered their head. It's been 6-7 hours now and it hasn't spread. Tonight if they are showing any signs of it still growing I'm going to swab them again just for good measure. Shame I didn't try it sooner, but I think holding a fish that small in a net and swabbing them with something that caustic is very stressful to them.

 

[Delapool]

Great news it is working! Yes, would never have considered it. I've heard of h2o2 being used in a similar fashion but the distance between eyes and mouth is so small for me. Great news again, keep us posted as nice to see a win.