Have I screwed up bad with bacterial infection??

[Theafishtank]

So a bit of background. I ordered five sorority females from eBay about a month ago. They seem very healthy active and beautiful. I put them in my tank, no quarantine I know that's stupid, but I really just have the aquarium to help with my chronic/mental illness. I'm not going to do that again though, Probably. After adding them in a week or two later all of my fish started getting really sick with dropsy. Pine coning floating up at the surface and then dying. None of the treatment that I did was working, sometimes the salt baths would help temporarily but then it would come right back. But after all that I ended up just euthanizing all of my fish and bleaching the entire aquarium.

I finally got that done about 2 days ago. And I had had two females and quarantine for about a week, I know that's not quite long enough, but they look quite healthy. And I put them into my 55 gallon after being bleached.

But I still have all the snails from the 55 aquarium in a 10 gallon aquarium. They've gone through a full treatment, and they've been separated from all of the fish for about 2 weeks. I used a small bucket to drain some water from that Aquarium a day ago. And last night after rinsing it thoroughly I used it to acclimate my two girls to the 55 gallon. I have really bad short-term memory problems and I don't know what I was thinking.

I'm seriously freaking out right now. I also just discovered that my baby betta, who's about 4 months old now. Who I put in with the African dwarf frogs that I had briefly in with the sick fish. Again I don't know what I was thinking I have pretty bad memory issues. And I just noticed today that he's slightly pine coning so I gave him a salt bath and started dosing him with melafix yesterday.

My big problem right now though is that I've already ordered new fish, no new bettas yet but dither fish and two Cory cats. And I'm so worried that I've re-contaminated my tank or that I haven't cleaned it well enough. The two girls that I put in are doing very well and seen quite healthy though.

As I have mentioned before I really just have this aquarium to help me through hard times. So this whole situation is really not helping.

 

[Aiken Drum]

There is a lot going on here, so lets start to break things down.

How long have you been keeping fish?

Are you aware of the nitrogen cycle and how to cycle a tank?

Are you able to do water tests.?

Breaking down and bleaching everything will kill off your cycle, and mean your system cant maintain good water quality without help. The vast majority of issues here with new fishkeepers is little to no understanding of the nitrogen cycle and how to cycle a tank.

 

[Theafishtank]

I'm definitely aware of the nitrogen cycle. I've been keeping fish for about 3 years, I'm just not incredibly invested. The tank where the fish started dying had been established for over a year and there had been no deaths in it. Until I introduced the new fish. After bleaching the aquarium I added a quick start and also aqueon pure bacteria balls. I also waited two days and added a ghost shrimp before adding any other fish to make sure the water was safe.

 

[Aiken Drum]

If you have decontaminated the big tank and there are no issues with it, i wouldn't worry about it unless you start to get issues. Not much you can do really. The 2 fish you have in there are currently healthy, what else can you do? Take them out and bleach everything again?

Be aware you will have crashed your cycle by what you have done. You need to fish in cycle, and this typically takes 6 to 8 weeks, and despite what it might say on the bottle of quick start that wont instantly cycle the tank. If there was any product out there that actually cycled a tank you would be rich overnight. At best these products speed up your cycle from months to weeks. Problems with water quality tend to take a couple of weeks to become evident, so keep an eye on things and do extra water changes for a few weeks. If you can test parameters, make sure ammonia and nitrite don't get elevated.

Also, dropsy. This is a sypmtom rather than an illness and can have several causes. By the time dropsy symptoms are evident it is generally too late to save the fish.

 

[Theafishtank]

Thank you for the thorough reply. I noticed some of them getting sick earlier but even when I started treatment it never helped. The pine coning was yes definitely the death stage. I will definitely be doing every other day water changes if not daily for a few weeks.

I guess what I'm worried about is that there's a spot that I missed. I don't know how small of an area can hold the infection. Like if I missed a crack on the lid is that enough to reinfect the tank?