Well, as the title suggests, I've been battling some illnesses. I suppose I'll just catalogue everything that happened, it might help...
It seems it all started a few months back when I noticed two of my clown killis with some white fuzz on their lips. I assumed it was fungus and treated like it was, and they seemed pretty good. Fast forward a few months where I had a betta in a divided tank and I needed to move him to a solo tank quickly as the residents in the other side of the tank were somehow getting to his side and getting eaten. :icon_neut I switched his ten gallon out for my 5 gallon killi tank which also had some sundadanio axelrodis (sorry for scientific name, don't know common name) in it.
While transferring, with proper acclimation procedures, I noticed the white fuzz was back on the same killis and had eaten part of their jaw off. Dip a salt dip just as a precaution until I could learn more, and put them back in the tank. Next time I have one of my axelrodi's lying on his side, lower half of his body looking grey and utterly destroyed. Cue quarantine tank, where I put in all of my killis (all showing signs), the half dead axelrodi and another axelrodi with some fuzz on his tail. Some research led to columnaris as my cause.
Started treating with salt dips, methylene blue dips, Nitrofurazone.
The funny thing is that I heard columnaris will kill everybody quickly and efficiently. It took a week to kill the stock in my quarantine tank (only have one solo female that I think I'm just going to go ahead and euthanize), and none of the axelrodi's left in the tank have been affected whatsoever. Did some more research and started suspecting costiasis, and now I'm not sure if I'm treating for the right thing. I will probably end up trying to preserve bacteria off of my female after euthanizing (does anybody know how to scrape off sections for bacteria samples and keep it preserved without a culture medium, or would a bottle of tank water suffice?) and try and identify it on a microscope.
Overall symptoms are:
-paleness of body, some areas not as shiny as others (mainly back, saddle area)
-One female got reddish coloured sores, but not flanked by grey
-Very rapid breathing, especially in last stages
-Erratic behavior, swimming into walls, being very passive when lifted out of water by net in last stages
-Flipping upside down/to the side in very last stages, right before death
-When showing signs of very rapid breathing, death usually followed.
No pictures unfortunately. By the time I caught on that something may be wrong here my last killi was dying and pretty much floating upside down, and her belly didn't offer anything interesting.
Thank you very much, this means a lot.
