Dying fish -- diagnosis? with pics

[Kinbote]

I'd posted this before in the Freshwater forum since I didn't realise this one existed. If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them.

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Another dead fish today, this time a rosy tetra, and a sick bleeding heart is steadily deteriorating. I'm assuming it's columnaris, have completed two cycles of Furan-2 and am starting a third, but it's had absolutely no perceivable effect with the fish still steadily dying, so I have to suspect it's something else.

I'm trying to keep the temperature down to 24C as recommended for columnaris but with the ambient room temperature it's usually nearer 26.

Ammonia and nitrite have consistently been reading 0.

The fish aren't eating much and I'm not feeding them much, so I doubt decayed food is a factor, but I've removed most of the gravel in case that was harbouring anything.

I've also added tonic salt since that's meant to inhibit columnaris's ability to attach to fish.

But if it is columnaris (or saprolegnia) I'd have expected it to respond to Furan-2, and it wouldn't make sense that this all started after contact with some sick cardinal tetras.

My last bleeding heart that died was a lot more symptomatic than the current ones, but I didn't get a picture unfortunately. It had the characteristic whitened saddle ring around its dorsal fin and some fuzzy white patches on its side.

I don't see anything on the rosy other than some internal whitening around its stomach, which looks vaguely like NTD, which would fit my suspicion that they might have NTD and only have columnaris as a more obvious, but secondary, infection.

The bleeding heart has a big patch of fuzz on its mouth and some more on its left pectoral fin and tail.

And here's a pic of one of the sick cardinals that seemed to start it all about 2 weeks ago.

Hope someone can suggest something. Pretty depressing so far. :dunno:

[alanmin4304]

Looks like mouth fungus which is actually a bacteria. Look up columnaris, mouth fungus or saddleback.

[Kinbote]

Looks like mouth fungus which is actually a bacteria. Look up columnaris, mouth fungus or saddleback.

Don't want to sound ungrateful or anything but I mentioned columnaris 5 times in my original post. :roll:

[ryanjury]

I am sure this thread has already happened?

[livingart]

deja vu :nilly:

with treatments not working you may have to do some culling as soon as they show signs of disease

if you are running gravel in Q tank remove it and wash plastic plants or remove real plants

bare tank and plastic plants for cover in QT

[Aquila]

But if it is columnaris (or saprolegnia) I'd have expected it to respond to Furan-2, and it wouldn't make sense that this all started after contact with some sick cardinal tetras.

Looks like columnaris to me, but Furan-2 would help with most other types of bacterial and fungal infections too.

I don't have any other suggestions sadly, but I do know that columnaris is very hard to cure. So although you are probably treating it correctly, would explain why you are not making much progress.

[Kinbote]

For everyone's information:

I was in Animates Henderson today and saw that two of their cardinal tetras had the same yellowish white discolouration that looks a lot like incurable NTD on their bodies as the ones from Bird Barn that started all the trouble with my fish. The tank was 'under treatment' but they hadn't done anything to remove the obviously sick fish from the rest.

Probably got them from the same breeder as Bird Barn, so I'd say if anyone wants cardinal tetras, now probably isn't the best time to buy them.

[alanmin4304]

Cardinals are not one of the easier tetras to breed so I would think most would be imported.