Treating Columnaris/Chilodonella

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Since this board has been up, we have found there are several questions that routinely get asked in order to help diagnose problems. If you can have that information to begin with in your post, we'll be able to help right away (if we can!) without having to wait for you to post the info we need.

1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.

2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.

3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)

4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.

5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.

We want to help, and providing this information will go a LONG way to getting a diagnosis and hopeful cure that much faster.

While you wait for assistance:
One of the easiest and best ways to help your fish feel better is clean water! If you are already on a regular water change schedule (50% weekly is recommended) a good step to making your fish more comfortable while waiting for diagnosis/suggestions is to do a large water change immediately. Feel free to repeat daily or as often as you can, clean water is always a good thing! Use of Amquel or Prime as a dechlor may help with any ammonia or nitrite issues, and is highly recommended.

Note - if you do not normally do large water changes, doing a sudden, large water change could shock your fish by suddenly changing their established water chemistry. Clean water is still your first goal, so in this case, do several smaller (10%) water changes over the next day or two before starting any large ones.
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Missus
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Treating Columnaris/Chilodonella

Post by Missus »

I currently have a female irrubesco puffer suffering from what's believed to be columnaris. She's spending a lot of time gasping at the surface of the tank, and a few days ago the male she shares her tank with died from the same thing (see thread:heater burn, fella being my boyfriend). I searched the forum and library but couldn't find all of the answers to my question so I signed up to post this instead :-)

Currently to try and save this little puffer's life I am

-Adding melafix
-Doing a 50% waterchange daily (carefully temperature matched water to prevent stress)
-Adding salt in a low quantity
-I have lowered the temperature to try and slow the bacteria growth.

What I want to know is

-Are my current treatment methods OK?
-Can I add myxazin? It conatins malachite green but I read on another puffer site that it will be OK to add, as long as it's in a very low dosage to avoid burning the puffer's skin?
- Would getting hold of some Pimafix benefit the puffer? It is quite difficult to get hold of (the only place I can remember seeing it being sold is Timmerman's garden centre which is out of town and I'm a student with no transport of my own, but I am willing to go to lengths to try and save this little puffer)
- Can anyone offer any personal experience of curing this or any other advice?

Thanks in advance for all your help. I didn't think this puffer would be alive this morning when I woke up but she was, and she seems a bit more lively today, but I'm not getting my hopes up after seeing her tankmate deteriorate so quickly!
Last edited by Missus on Sun Mar 19, 2006 12:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Pufferpunk »

You should talk to puffer_archer, about this. I think he had a Ceylon puffer with some kind of degenerative disease.
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Missus
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Post by Missus »

Thanks to my housemate's generous donation of £3.50 I was able to get out to Timmerman's this afternoon and I now have some pimafix! I will carry on treating with that and melafix, plus the daily water changes.

Just for the record, they had just got in lots of new puffers at Timmermans, SAPs, a congo puffer (which I had never seen before, he looked so grumpy!), a nile puffer, a "Pig nose" puffer (arrowhead?) and a beautiful Mbu (I can see why people buy them without realising their needs, it was are gorgeous. One day I will have a tank big enough :lol:)

I will try PMing puffer_archer :-)
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Missus
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Post by Missus »

Never mind, she died :-(

I got shown this http://www.fish-disease.net/diseases/chilodonella.php just now, and that actually sounds like the exact description of the illness (where as the Columnaris had a lot of symptoms that fitted, but was not exact). Could anyone advise me on suitable puffer meds? Once again malachite green and formalin (myxazin) are being advised as the treatment, but I need to know whether these are puffer safe (in low doses) or not.

:(
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Post by Raphael »

Sorry to hear about it. At least you did all you could.
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Post by Hilly »

You and fella have been real unlucky with your irrubesco's, such a shame after the effort put into getting them.
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Phaedrus
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Post by Phaedrus »

Deeply sorry for you both. You both tried very hard though, so don't beat yourself up over it. Sometimes there just isn't anything we can do.

If the disease was indeed the one you linked to, maybe it would be a good idea to do a complete tear down and start from scratch to prevent any reinfection of future inhabitants the tanks. Either that or maybe dose with the recommended medication now that the tanks is empty.
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Missus
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Post by Missus »

Thanks for the kind words guys, it's appreciated! I did my very best and did everything I could for her. :-)

A buddy who is quite knowledgeable about fish diseases thinks that it was the parasite chilodonella which resulted in a secondary bacterial infection that set in that killed the other fish.

We have one irrubesco puffer left. She was in the tank which had the inhabitants that died up until about a week ago. I noticed her flashing and trying to scratch herself on a plant this morning so I am treating that tank as if it had Ich (a site linked in the pinned "treating parasites" thread recommends salt at a 0.2% solution to treat Chilodonella, so I am going along with what that says: I presume this is the same as adding a tablespoon of aquarium salt for every 5 gallons?)

I will add melafix as a precaution to treat any lesions or damage to the gills the fish might have if this tank is indeed infected with chilodonella.

I don't have an airstone, but I've set up the fluval internal filter to add loads of airbubbles to the water it filters, this should have the same effect as the bubbles are still breaking on the surface of the water, right? (Sorry if that's a stupid question, I am a bit lost with all of this)

Fingers crossed that I have caught this fish flashing before she's really sick, she's not showing any other signs of illness, but after the last few day's events I am extremely paranoid!
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Phaedrus
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Post by Phaedrus »

Good luck!
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