sick ctenopoma

[angryinsect]

I recently(3weeks ago) aquired a group of leopard ctenopoma(18), all seem to be eating very well and are active. but now i am starting to loose them to an unknown sickness(down to about 12). most of them look fine but a few of them are faded and look sick. the fish that look bad are looking faded and cloudy from the lateral line up. the lower half of the fish looks fine. has any experienced this or something similar. any idea on how to cure? i started treatment 2 days ago with api fungus cure, erythromycin and salt. I also upped the temp to 84f but i'm not seeing any improvement with the infected fish. None of the other fish seem at all affected(SAL,ghost knife,some cichlid fry). I really don't want to loose these fish, any help would be appreciated


cheers,
Jordan

[splat]

do you think it's columnaris? i had this go through my tank and it wiped out my population of rainbowfish within a week! yet the others 'seemed' fine. all they had was cloudy looking heads..some had none at all.
what was suggested to me was erythromyocin and 50% water changes everyday, before putting the meds in of course. you need either a broad spectrum antibiotic or a gram negative antibiotic to kill columnaris. the water changes will help the disease from spreading and keep it's population down. from what i've learned columnaris loves high temps so if it is, i would lower the temp down to what is was before.
i really think the water changes helped my fish a lot. time will tell if they are better..so far i haven't lost one for 3 days.
i hope your tank gets better!
here is a link that helped me id what my fish had
http://http://www.badmanstropicalfish.com/fish_palace/tropicalfish_disease_identification.html

[angryinsect]

water changes aren't the issue, the tank was getting a daily 20-40% water change before i started medicating. temps are normally around 81f so 84f shouldn't stress the fish, should speed up their metabolizm for quicker healing. don't think its columnaris as this sickness is moving much too slow
Cheers,
Jordan