Fin rot on my new Pandas

[Teelie]

I've had this tank clean for over 2 years (since it was set up) without a single disease and one death (from a heater burn a few years ago) and now two of my three new Panda cories have it. What's worse is I have a large number of snails in there including a giant Golden Apple I've had for 3 years. I somewhat overreacted and dosed the tank with antifungal/bacterial treatment before thinking it might kill the snails and now I've had to remove my Apple and hope he lives. He's in with my Khulis and moving around (I just hope not with the finrot spreading). The other snails are trumpets and pond snails so if they do die, they're no big loss (dozens more under the sand) but I'm going to be picking dead snails out for weeks and averting a ammonia spike if they do.

I have a 10g set up partially for shell dwellers I should've quarantined the Pandas in but the pH was over 8 and there were no decorations so I stupidly dropped them in my Cory tank thinking they'd be fine. I've added fish before without problems (my LFS is normally quite reliable with sick fish being quarantined) but it just takes one burn to realize how important sticking to quarantine is.

Yesterday, the fish looked fine, today, one looks like it took on a piranha and another has some milder tears and damage. I changed 30% of the water and intend to do another 30% tonight to try and remove some of the medication, clean the water and just keep things healthy, I hope.

There's always the positive side of this (getting new/more fish) but it involves my fish dying and I'd rather not have that. So let that be a lesson to you: Always stick to quarantine whenever possible.

 

[sylvia]

Good luck with the cories! I hope they recover.

I've done this too. My quarantine tank(s) at the time were full and I had nowhere to put the fish. It's happened on several occasions in fact but I usualy just quarantine in a bucket or do some re-arranging. On one occasion though, I had a surprise addition (rescued...) and she ended up introducing all sorts of things to the tank. Took me for ever to get things back under control and, though she survived, I had some other losses because of it. Sometimes, unfortunately, things like this are inevitable. Still, to anyone reading this, if you don't have a quarantine tank yet, get one. You won't regret it.