How to make sure tank is free of infection?

[InfraredDream]

Morainy, thanks a lot for taking so much of your time to answer and give so much information. And I appreciate the support a lot! As you guess I very down and blue as you know how much I loved these endlers and how much efforts and love I put into starting that tank. And to lose it all like this is not easy And I have never experienced that kind of infection that is killing my fish one after the other like that. Very depressing indeed!

As you said because of the survivals I don't really want to break the tank and start over. I will do it if there is no other way to fight this. But again, with the fish, shrimp and plants I can easily just have the bacteria start spreading again.

Can somebody recommend a treatment that will kill bacteria and won't harm shrimp and plants? I did a lot of reading, but everything contradicts, so I would like to get advice from people that tried something and it worked.
Thanks a lot!

[neven]

i found this while looking on how to treat my new tank:

Now that we understand the life cycle of freshwater ich, many of our treatment recommendations make more sense. Because the life cycle is temperature-dependent and the ich can only be killed in the tomite stage, we will want to raise the tank temperature to 78-80°F over 48 hours to speed the cycle of tomite formation and release. Theoretically, if the cycle takes four days to complete at this temperature, then the treatment should be complete in 4 days. On the other hand, if the temperature is much colder, for example at 60°F, the treatment would need to last for several weeks or longer.

Since we understand that we cannot kill ich while it is on the fish, we know that moving a fish to a quarantine tank to treat will not solve the problem in the main tank. The time to use a quarantine tank is before a new fish is introduced into a display tank. If a fish in a tank has ich, you must assume that the entire tank is now contaminated with ich and must be treated.

Another way to get ich out of a tank is to remove all of the fish. Since we know that the tomites can only survive for 48 hours without attaching to a fish, if we remove all of the fish and then raise the temperature to 80°, the existing ich in the tank should be dead after 2 days. To be safe, wait 4 days before returning the fish to the tank. But remember, you will need to treat the tank that the fish are moved to, otherwise, fish entering that tank could become infected.

Remember, we are treating the tank, not the fish, so all effective treatments are designed to kill the trophite form of the disease while it is in the tank. The mature ich organisms that cause the problems on the fish do not die from treatment, but fall off in a couple of days during their normal life cycle and then their offspring die from the treatment in the water.

Some of the best treatments historically have been formalin or malachite green, or a combination of the two. Copper, methylene blue, and baths of potassium permanganate, quinine hydrochloride, and sodium chloride have also been used but do not appear to offer an advantage over the more readily available formalin and malachite green products.

When using formalin, make sure to use recently purchased formalin. Formalin that is stored for long periods of time can convert to paraformaldehyde, which can be toxic to fish. An indicator that this has occurred is the formation of a white precipitate in the bottle. Malachite green may also stain some decorations and silicone to a green color and may be toxic to piranhas, neons, sunfish, and some scaleless fish, if given at the recommended dose. For these fish or other sensitive species, they should be treated at half strength and monitored carefully for signs of distress.

While we rarely recommend treating an entire tank for a disease, ich is an exception. Make sure to follow individual label directions, and remove the carbon from your filter and shut off any UV sterilizers or protein skimmers during treatment because they will inactivate or remove any medications that are added.

[InfraredDream]

Thanks a lot, neven! I think I read something like that before.
I am not sure it is ich though. Only one of all fish I lost had 3 white dots on one of the fins. Most had different kind of cottony-like things - 2 on the tail and 2 - above their eye (just one eye). The rest was rapid - clamped fins for a day or two and then dead
No idea what is that Can ich lead to such "cotton" in a stressed/weak fish?

[neven]

either way, if your tank is guppy's and endlers, i recommend the highest temp your tetra's can handle.

Personally what i've done was set the tank to 28 C (guppies only), and i started to dose metricide every 12 hours instead of 24h. my reasoning for this is formaldehyde, is an active ingredient in one form of ich treatment so im hoping the glutaraldehyde will get me the same results. Formalin says 5 mL every other day per 10 gallons of water and the concentration of it is 3% formaldehyde, metricide is 2.6%.

Not sure if it'll work but i got no cash to spare for some aquarium meds :P

[InfraredDream]

What bothers me is that bacteria infection that i suspect and Morainy also mentioned is supposed to be treated with low temperature as it can't handle that, but spread fast in high. They also give sudden raise of temp as one of the reasons for that bacteria and when I think about that it all happened exactly during the temp spike in mid-Aug.
Metricide is something I read will help eigther way. What I can't find is if that is safe for shrimps?

[neven]

very high dosages of metricide are harmful to shrimp, my bba thread covers the threshold. I've dosed 4 times recommend levels with shrimp in my 29G tank, so i know the limits, but thats for my tank and shrimp only. But im not sure if this works, its something im trying out

as for medications safety for fish, this one explains it:

http://www.fishchannel.com/media/fre...-fish.aspx.pdf

most medications are the same thing under different brands. Some blend a few types together.

[InfraredDream]

Sounds good! Thanks a lot, neven! I will do some more reading and give it one more day for more responses and then will go with it.

[InfraredDream]

I read the desctiption of Lifeguard and they don't recommend it for Invertebrates. Is that only a precaution to be safe?
Other then this sounds like a magical medication.

[Morainy]

I just looked in my aquarium pharmacy and found a new box of Jungle Lifeguard. It says that it attacks a broad range of fish diseases, including fungus, ick, fin rot, etc. It also says that it is not suitable for scaleless fish or invertebrates.

I don't know whether you want to give it a try or how it would affect your shrimp. At this point, the best thing might be to just keep doing the water changes and a bit of salt and hope that some fish pull through. But if you'd like to try the Jungle Lifeguard I will give you my box.

I have used this product but not with shrimp. I don't know if there are better products. So, I'm not promoting it but if you'd like to try it, you are welcome to. Having sick fish is very stressful!

[InfraredDream]

Thank you so much, you are so kind! I am not sure what to do I feel very lost and really stressed now. I see symptoms everywhere, even another tank this morning I guess I am getting paranoid at this time
I was hoping to get more advices from people that also have shrimps. But I guess that kind of outbreak are not that common.
One thing I know is once it's over, I will never EVER put a LFS fish in my tank before quarantine! And I guess getting fish from a store won't happen anytime soon