Symptoms started on Valentine (RIP
) about 5 days ago, with an opaque side fin and a small grey patch, the gray spread over her in about 3 days and one eye clouded over and the tail fin started looking ragged about then. She also started spending more time at the top and swimming lethargically/jerky. Last night the sore appeared on her side in front of her tail and she was intermittently floating on her side, and swimming jerkily, always at the top. She didn't even try to swim away when I netted her out. I gave her a salt and kordon herbal ich attack bath (4T salt 10ml kordon in 4 cups water) for 4 minutes and then put her in the 10 gallon QT tank (dosed with 3T salt and 10 ml kordons) with some hornwort to lay/float on (We were pretty sure she wasn't going to make it and I wanted her to be comfy) She didn't act like the salt bath was uncomfortable at all, didn't startle or try to jerk away when I gently stroked her head and crooned to her ...totally crying...
My second largest female, Queenie, (Now my largest i suppose
) started showing the exact same symptoms about a day after Valentine did, but not quite as lethargic, tho she does seem to have a rather droopy tail end/hunchback...
Anyways she was acting pretty much the same but just a day or two behind in symptoms, plus was getting harassed by my males quite a bit and so I decided to move her to the QT tank too. She had much more energy than Valentine when it came time to net her and also was not a huge fan of the salt bath, thrashed a bit and darted about, but calmed quickly once in the QT tank. This morning after finding Valentine had passed in the night like we expected I tested the water and the ammonia was .25-.5, if I'd been thinking clearly I wouldn't have put Queenie in there because I should have anticipated the ammonia spike from Valentines death... But luckily Queenie was no worse for wear, She actually made a pretty good attempt at evading capture lol and I'm happy to say she's been looking much better today, her opaque greying has lessened, she's swimming a bit more energetically and she seems to be paying attention to whats going on around her more. She is still pretty much exclusively swimming at the top tho, Should I repeat the salt bath or let her be?
None of the others seem to be displaying the same symptoms thankfully, except some mild tail rot (tattered with a bit of redness, but no gray) but 4 or 5 of the smaller bodied females were acting oddly the past 2 days, congregating in a yarn mop I made, even standing on their heads almost to crowd together between it and the glass and not moving much. But then if I startled them they'd scatter and all swim about perfectly normal and 10 minutes later would be back all together... is that normal? naptime? I moved the mop to the qt tank last nigh and the other females today haven't been congregating together at the bottom anymore, could it just be that its soft and comfy?
We picked up api's pimafix and melafix today, should we dose? Should we get an antibiotic instead? And we ran out of ich attack today but forgot to get more, Should we pick up more? Can the 3 be mixed?
Sorry for the million question, but please give as many answers/opinions as you can...