# Columnaris Treatment Plan



## Sorafish (Sep 15, 2011)

Has anyone used a combination of Erythromycin and Triple Sulfa for this? Talking with the seller of my Black AOC to help with this problem, and he suggested a combination of the two, but hasn't given me any measurements/tactics for using it yet and I'm looking to start treatment today.


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## Sorafish (Sep 15, 2011)

ALSO, I'm worried about the actual tank. I've taken the fish out of their tank and put them in a bare, 10 gallon hospital tank. But what do I do about their tank? Someone recommended bleach (10%) but that would restart the tank, and I'm not sure the fish would survive in the hospital tank for the lengthy cycling process...


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## phlyergirl (Nov 6, 2011)

I would run the tank with bleach or peroxide for a day. Sorry, I know it sucks, but it's really not worth the risk to ALL the future inhabitants of the tank. You could steal some media from the 20 to get it going again. I don't know about the antibiotics, though, sorry.  Good luck.


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## Fishpunk (Apr 18, 2011)

Go read all the columnarus infomration you can find on WetWebMedia. It's not an infection with a very good track record of cures. If your fish are out of the main tank and you are certain it is columnarus, bleaching all the hardware and starting the cycle again is probably your best approach. That way, you will have a clean tank regardless of whether your animals survive or not.


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## Sorafish (Sep 15, 2011)

Well, considering these fish cost a good $100 bucks, I was a bit more worried about them than the tank. I did a treatment with it in mind that these fish WILL survive, so I treated the tank as well.
After talking with Pete Mang, I stripped their tank of everything except gravel. I beached the filter, boiled the gravel, then filled the tank to 75% with the gravel. Put the fish back in with an airstone.

Melafix sucked as far as curing them went. Kept them ALIVE, but didn't HELP them all that much.

As per Pete's directions, I put in 1 packet of Ethromycin and 1 packet of Triple Sulfa in the tank. One hour after adding, the fish all perked back up and actually started looking around for food/flirting. I'm on day three of doing this, and tomorrow I do a water change, but all signs of it have almost disappeared. I'm going to repeat this treatment day after tomorrow, and hopefully they will be cured.

The fish were very bad off. One female had the partial paralysis from the saddleback colomnaris. One female almost couldn't eat for the white fuzz coating her mouth(had to carefully scrape off what I could to even get her ABLE to eat) and the males weren't all that interested in flirting (for guppies, this says something was REALLY wrong)

I'm pretty sure it was colomnaris this time. The dead fish I found had fins that looked eaten when I knew they hadn't been, and one female that I had that looked REALLY bad off had fins that were ALL fraying/disintegrating, fuzz on the mouth, and a open sore on her side with the fuzz.


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2012)

Sounds like your fish had a fungus infection. I hope that they get better soon. There is anti-fungus medication for fungus infections.


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## Sorafish (Sep 15, 2011)

Angelclown said:


> Sounds like your fish had a fungus infection. I hope that they get better soon. There is anti-fungus medication for fungus infections.


Er...except that the anti-bacterial worked...'mouth fungus' is another name for columnaris, but its actually a bacterial infection...


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## Fishpunk (Apr 18, 2011)

I'm glad the treatment worked out for you, and that you also addressed the main tank. Columnarus can be a nasty one to beat.


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## Sorafish (Sep 15, 2011)

Fishpunk said:


> I'm glad the treatment worked out for you, and that you also addressed the main tank. Columnarus can be a nasty one to beat.


Thank you! I'm glad too! I was just relieved that I diagnosed them right this time!! (when I first joined these forums, I thought my fish THEN had it, but it had turned out to be Hexamita, WITH Columnarus) I'm glad I could cure it with so few losses this time! That first time was a DISASTER!


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## Obsidian (May 20, 2007)

The only thing you need to worry about now, provided that the disease is all taken care of, is the cycle. With what you did your tank will need to cycle again. Don't fret that you did anything wrong though, it probably saved your fish. Get some stability


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## Sorafish (Sep 15, 2011)

Obsidian said:


> The only thing you need to worry about now, provided that the disease is all taken care of, is the cycle. With what you did your tank will need to cycle again. Don't fret that you did anything wrong though, it probably saved your fish. Get some stability


Agreed! I haven't put the filter back in yet, but since I'm using the same gravel, it SHOULD be ok. I've boiled the filter a couple times before to get the yuck out of it and the tank didn't have to recycle so long as the gravel stays the same. But I'm expecting a new filter all together in the mail soon (trying out a sponge filter, not entirely sure how they work) so I may just wait for that while I finish medicating them. I'm probably really lucky that all I keep is guppies, as this is probably a no-no for other species/more complicated tank setups.


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