Re: Sick rainbowfish advice

[throatwarbler mangrove <kta6662003@yahoo.com>]

Whenever fish get sick, the first thing to do is
isolate the sick one -> even a floating plastic
shoebox with an airator does fine. Then you can treat
it separately.

In both cases, I would slowly raise the tank temp to
85 and increase the amount of salt to no less than 1
tablespoon/gallon. Scaled fish can survive a *lot* of
salt in the water. Plants may have problems -> but
plants are usually cheaper to replace than fish.
Anubias, java fern, java moss can withstand quite a
bit of salt as can most hygrophila in my experience.

The 'gold dusting' of Oodinium (velvet) has been the
killi keepers bane for as long as killis have been in
the hobby. My experience with it, is that it thrives
in tanks that have uneaten food in them, in
overcrowded conditions. Velvet as well responds to
increased salinity. Rosario La Corte once told me he
treated velvet by putting sick killis in containers
that were basically super-saturated with salt
(gradually), add as much salt until it stops
dissolving. My experience with velvet is that you
don't need quite that much but you need a lot.

The other thing to ask is, what changed to bring on
the disease outbreaks? New fish? Plants? Change in
routine (new foods? trying live foods.) It's good to
keep track of such. When you get a new fish esp. one
you're going to introduce to a tank of rare and
unusual fish, $10 spent to setup a 10 gallon isolation
tank for a month more than pays for itself in lost
fish and wildly overpriced fish medications.

Good luck.

Matt
--- steev ward <steevward@mac.com> wrote:
> Darcey,
> 
> It sounds like a gill problem, doesn't it? (Unless
> there are other symptoms you
> are missing, like clamped fins or especially dark
> coloring, or bloat or
> something.) In that case I would suspect a gill
> parasite, and since it has come
> on rapidly after a flucuation in water chemistry
> (the nutrients) I would guess
> it is a protozoan (such as Chilodonella or Costia -
> either of these two could
> cause the symptoms Clay describes as well.).
> 
> In that case you would want to use a medication that
> treats Ich and other
> external protozoans (Not an antibiotic like Maracyn
> or Neomycin). Since you have
> a large tank you would want to remove one or more of
> the afflicted fish and see
> if you can "cure" their problem using Ich medication
> in a small tank. (You might
> actually want to use a DIFFERENT medication on the
> tank itself if you decide to
> treat the whole tank.)
> 
> If this instead was a problem with Velvet (Oodinum)
> you should also see some
> external signs on some of the fish eventually, in
> the form of a dusty appearance
> on the skin and fins (clamped fins at least).
> 
> If gill flukes are to blame then I would expect to
> see a few ematiated fish here
> and there before now, or some unexplained deaths.
> Still, gill flukes are one
> possibility and they won't likely be erradicated by
> most Ich medications,
> although it may bring minor temporary relief.
> 
> Bacterial gill problems don't usually affect fish
> under the conditions you
> describe. Mycobacteria would be an exception, but
> that would likely be a more
> slowly progressing disease with other signs
> noticeable (in Rainbowfish you would
> see some red sores or ulcers on a few of them, maybe
> some bloated stomachs.
> 
> This is all guesswork of course, because there are
> many possibilities.
> I'm guessing Chilodonella.
> 
> For Clay's problem I'm guessing Skin Flukes, because
> of the fuzziness  and
> because the problem is recurring. But that could be
> Chilodonella as well.
> 
> Steev
> 
>  ------------------
>  To unsubscribe from this list, please send mail to
> majordomo@thekrib.com
>  with "Unsubscribe gsas-member" in the body of the
> message.  Archives of
>  this list can be found at
> http://lists.thekrib.com/gsas-member/
> 


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
 ------------------
 To unsubscribe from this list, please send mail to majordomo@thekrib.com
 with "Unsubscribe gsas-member" in the body of the message.  Archives of
 this list can be found at http://lists.thekrib.com/gsas-member/