mouth rot or aggression?

[p0tluck]

after doing what was advised on here upping my water changes to 50% weekly instead of 35 fish are doing better , nitrates are still high 30 - 40 ppm, only thing i know to do is get some plants, as gravel vaccing and cleaning sponge on filter isnt doing anything maybe my liquid is bad i will get another couple new bottles tomorrow, i bought 3 odessa barbs a month or so ago (was never told barbs have to be 10+) one male did die one male is doing great but he hides a lot, the female however looks like her front of her face is chaffed and her lip looks like its missing part of it she eats , shes fat it doesnt seem to be bothering her but i know it has to be, i have tried to get a picture but shes way to fast i cant even catch her in the net, thats why her name is turbo, I will try again to get a picture im stubborn so i will update when i do. i have melafix and fungus guard here but i really don't wanna treat fungus guard again as i just did it not to long ago.

readings are
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 30-40 ppm
ph 7.4
water temp is 76

Another issue is i just set up 2/30 gallon tanks one for quarantine, one for my nephews cichlids just 2 1 convict 1 mbuna but he wants to get 2 more mbunas which i dont think will be to much for a 30 gallon but the issue is i cannot get the tanks to start cycling i have added fish flakes to the tank, they have been set up for a week, i did add 50 ml of live bacteria to both tanks to get the bacteria going the tanks both read
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 0
ph 7.6

i know they havent cycled yet any idea on how to jump start the ammonia ( fishless cycle) so i can get these cichlids out of their cramped tank and into the new one?

 

[p0tluck]

after doing what was advised on here upping my water changes to 50% weekly instead of 35 fish are doing better , nitrates are still high 30 - 40 ppm, only thing i know to do is get some plants, as gravel vaccing and cleaning sponge on filter isnt doing anything maybe my liquid is bad i will get another couple new bottles tomorrow, i bought 3 odessa barbs a month or so ago (was never told barbs have to be 10+) one male did die one male is doing great but he hides a lot, the female however looks like her front of her face is chaffed and her lip looks like its missing part of it she eats , shes fat it doesnt seem to be bothering her but i know it has to be, i have tried to get a picture but shes way to fast i cant even catch her in the net, thats why her name is turbo, I will try again to get a picture im stubborn so i will update when i do. i have melafix and fungus guard here but i really don't wanna treat fungus guard again as i just did it not to long ago.

readings are
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 30-40 ppm
ph 7.4
water temp is 76

Another issue is i just set up 2/30 gallon tanks one for quarantine, one for my nephews cichlids just 2 1 convict 1 mbuna but he wants to get 2 more mbunas which i dont think will be to much for a 30 gallon but the issue is i cannot get the tanks to start cycling i have added fish flakes to the tank, they have been set up for a week, i did add 50 ml of live bacteria to both tanks to get the bacteria going the tanks both read
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 0
ph 7.6

i know they havent cycled yet any idea on how to jump start the ammonia ( fishless cycle) so i can get these cichlids out of their cramped tank and into the new one?

Update: okay i finally got some ok pics not to good as shes fast but best i could, her eye even looks deformed and by her gills looks purple... grrr

 

[Tifftastic]

That looks a lot like mouth rot to me. . .

You can do a fishless cycle by jump starting the tank with fish food, a piece of shrimp, or pure ammonia. Since you seeded the tank it won't take as long. But it will still take a good few weeks.

Also, I wouldn't recommend adding South American cichlids with Africans. It rarely ever works out, they just don't understand each other. A 30 gallon with one convict and one mbuna is already too much in my opinion.

 

[p0tluck]

okay they seem to get along but they beat up the RTS , they do chase each other and the mbuna usually wins so what should i do because they are his fish and he will not part with any and they are healthy the convict is pretty big i dont know what to do this is what lfs sold him when he went in, it origionally was a convict and a blue eyes something but the blue eyes fish was super mean..

as far as whats going on in my tank if you've read my prevvious posts i've medicated my take with numerous meds should i try treating the whole tank with melafix or will that not do anything for whats going on? or what would you recommend cause what i've read is that mouth rot is contageous

 

[Tifftastic]

If it were me, and others may disagree, I would isolate the barb, and any others showing signs, with mouth rot. Just make sure to keep an eye on the ammonia levels in the QT. From my experience, mouth rot is really hard to treat and you may lose it even if the water is pristine, it's better to not put your other fish at risk. I wouldn't treat the whole tank personally, it would be a waste if the other fish are fine. Easier/cheaper to treat a smaller tank. The thing I have read with mouth rot is that it can be fungal or bacterial in origin. But is usually bacterial. However, it can come with a secondary fungal infection. The other thing is that to treat fungus and bacteria you typically want to lower the temperature to slow the growth, also something that is easier to do when you are only treating one or two fish, as lowering the temp can be stressful for more sensitive species. The only way I have successfully treated mouth rot is with treating the whole tank with Melafix and doing twice daily salt dips on the affected fish. The amount of salt required to kill the bacteria is too high for the fish to live in on a day to day basis, but a dip in a high concentration (1 tblsp in about 3 cups of tank water) is ok for about 30s to a minute a couple of times a day.

 

[Tifftastic]

There's some good info in this thread
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/treating-mouthrot-mouth-fungus.21286/

 

[p0tluck]

If it were me, and others may disagree, I would isolate the barb, and any others showing signs, with mouth rot. Just make sure to keep an eye on the ammonia levels in the QT. From my experience, mouth rot is really hard to treat and you may lose it even if the water is pristine, it's better to not put your other fish at risk. I wouldn't treat the whole tank personally, it would be a waste if the other fish are fine. Easier/cheaper to treat a smaller tank. The thing I have read with mouth rot is that it can be fungal or bacterial in origin. But is usually bacterial. However, it can come with a secondary fungal infection. The other thing is that to treat fungus and bacteria you typically want to lower the temperature to slow the growth, also something that is easier to do when you are only treating one or two fish, as lowering the temp can be stressful for more sensitive species. The only way I have successfully treated mouth rot is with treating the whole tank with Melafix and doing twice daily salt dips on the affected fish. The amount of salt required to kill the bacteria is too high for the fish to live in on a day to day basis, but a dip in a high concentration (1 tblsp in about 3 cups of tank water) is ok for about 30s to a minute a couple of times a day.

okay well as in my previous posts i've stated i've lost a lot of fish over the last few months so i dont think it would be a bad idea to treat the whole tank as my angels bottom lip is white but was told its from fighting , but better safe than sorry, i was told to keep doing water changes to get the salt out of my tank by another site before i joined here, i used to keep my salt in my tank at 1%, the qt tank/hospital tank only has a small sponge filter on it cause i didnt have the extra money at the time to get 2 filters and i surely dont want to put this fish in my nephews tank. man this is stressful i've never had any issues with fish from the place i go to and now all of a sudden boom..

attached a pic of my angels lip

 

[Tifftastic]

I've seen your other posts, and what you've gone through with the tank. Read the post from MFK, the poster there has a lot of good info on how to treat mouth rot. Lowering the temp might be too stressful on the angels, but not the barb. The angel's lip doesn't look like rot to me, it doesn't look like dead/necrotic tissue, just looks injured. In my honest opinion the barb looks too far gone to save, but you may have a shot in isolation. The other thing is that when it starts getting like that the other fish will pick at him and make it worse. Salt is usually recommended as a preventative for rot, but some fish are sensitive to the extra dissolved solids. So, its a tossup. But in QT they are only exposed temporarily and it won't do much damage in the long run. You can try meds, but I really recommend isolation and salt dips. Just do daily water changes on the QT tank while the fish is in there. It will help the healing process anyway. Also, he/she obviously can't eat in that state and you won't have the waste of food and too much metabolic waste occurring in the tank.

 

[p0tluck]

I've seen your other posts, and what you've gone through with the tank. Read the post from MFK, the poster there has a lot of good info on how to treat mouth rot. Lowering the temp might be too stressful on the angels, but not the barb. The angel's lip doesn't look like rot to me, it doesn't look like dead/necrotic tissue, just looks injured. In my honest opinion the barb looks too far gone to save, but you may have a shot in isolation. The other thing is that when it starts getting like that the other fish will pick at him and make it worse. Salt is usually recommended as a preventative for rot, but some fish are sensitive to the extra dissolved solids. So, its a tossup. But in QT they are only exposed temporarily and it won't do much damage in the long run. You can try meds, but I really recommend isolation and salt dips. Just do daily water changes on the QT tank while the fish is in there. It will help the healing process anyway. Also, he/she obviously can't eat in that state and you won't have the waste of food and too much metabolic waste occurring in the tank.

okay let me see if i can find my old heater for the qt tank im just trying to cycle it atm so didnt get a heather for it house temp is 74 so i might not need one, the fish does eat though and yes even the smallest of fish i have in my tank pick at her which are the glo lite danios , im getting bummed out i will probably end up losing this fish and will never get another barb i have had bad luck with them probably because i was told they dont need schools of 5+

i've read the BFK site i dont have those kinds of meds around me im just baffled at this , i can't get my nitrates down no matter what i do maybe i'll do daily water changes, do you think it could be the nitrates causing this?

 

[Tifftastic]

Its hard to say what's causing it, it could have just been poor stock to begin with or it could be a combination of things. If the tank is staying at 74 then I would stick with that temp as its around what is suggested to treat the infection. I'm a huge fan of salt dips myself they work pretty well in my experience. Your nitrates confuse me as well. Your tank isn't over stocked, it doesn't seem like you are over feeding and youre doing a lot of water changes. I don't understand, the math doesn't make sense. With how much you said you had treated I wasn't sure if you had any of those meds around from previous trials, but give the salt a go. I wish I still had pictures, but I had a massive goldfish at the store I worked at that looked like a zombie that I managed to treat with salt dips only, and lots of water changes. It took a month and a half but he/she recovered.