Fin, body, and mouth issues

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Tempestuousfury

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Attached are the relevant images. Multiple rainbows have fin rot and mouth growths; one has a body lesion. Iā€™m looking for an id and relevant treatment, please. My searches keep including melafix, so Iā€™m not trusting the responses I find through them.

Please and thank you!
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The first thing i would do is a large water change. What are your parameters? Fin rot is often a result of poor water quality. Rather than throw in medication, it is best to find the root cause and fix that first.
 
I have definitely waited a while to do a water change. After having done one I had about 50%, the readings were zero ammonia zero nitrite five nitrate. There was however a bunch of organic matter that I ended up removing so Water Quality was an issue but unfortunately itā€™s not a parameter that I can test.
 
How long have you had the fish for?
How long have the fish had the white mouth and marks on fins for?
Have you added anything to the tank in the 2 weeks before this started?

How long has the tank been set up for?
How often do you do water changes and how much do you change?
Do you gravel clean the substrate when you do a water change?
Do you dechlorinate any new water before adding it to the tank?

What sort of filter is on the tank?
How often and how do you clean the filter?

What is the GH (general hardness), KH (carbonate hardness) and pH of your water supply?
This information can usually be obtained from your water supply company's website or by telephoning them. If they can't help you, take a glass full of tap water to the local pet shop and get them to test it for you. Write the results down (in numbers) when they do the tests. And ask them what the results are in (eg: ppm, dGH, or something else).
 
BASIC FIRST AID FOR FISH
Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge. This removes the biofilm on the glass and the biofilm will contain lots of harmful bacteria, fungus, protozoans and various other microscopic life forms.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week or until the problem is identified. The water changes and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in. It also removes a lot of the gunk and this means any medication can work on treating the fish instead of being wasted killing the pathogens in the gunk.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use them. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration to maximise the dissolved oxygen in the water.
 
Rainbowfish have soft mouths and can injure them if they swim into something hard. This is most commonly seen in new fish that are still finding their way around the aquarium, but can also occur in fish that get frightened or panic for some reason.

It looks like there is excess mucous on the fins. This is normally caused by poor water quality or low pH. Most rainbowfish do better in water with a pH above 7.0 and a GH above 200ppm.

The treatment for these 2 problems is cleaning the tank and adding salt. Rainbowfish tolerate salt very well and it can be used to treat a number of illnesses.

Do the treatment under First Aid for Fish (above), and add salt (see directions below).
Clean glass. Do 75% water change and gravel clean substrate every day for a week. Clean filter. Increase aeration. Add salt.

If it gets worse, post more pictures.

Make sure they get plenty of plant matter in their diet. Rainbowfish need at least half their diet made up of plant based foods.

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SALT
You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), sea salt, or swimming pool salt to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres of water. If there is no improvement after 48 hours you can double that dose rate so there is 2 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

If you only have livebearers (guppies, platies, swordtails, mollies), goldfish or rainbowfish in the tank you can double that dose rate, so you would add 2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres and if there is no improvement after 48 hours, then increase it so there is a total of 4 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, Bettas & gouramis, loaches) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers, rainbowfish or other salt tolerant species.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria but the higher dose rate (4 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres) will affect some plants and some snails. The lower dose rate (1-2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres) will not affect fish, plants, shrimp or snails.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week using only fresh water that has been dechlorinated. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that. This dilutes the salt out of the tank slowly so it doesn't harm the fish.

If you do water changes while using salt, you need to treat the new water with salt before adding it to the tank. This will keep the salt level stable in the tank and minimise stress on the fish.

When you first add salt, add the salt to a small bucket of tank water and dissolve the salt. Then slowly pour the salt water into the tank near the filter outlet. Add the salt over a couple of minutes.
 

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