Fungus, Bacteria? Will it ever go away?

[lydian]

OK, I have a 55 gallon tank with UGF (2 powerheads) along with 1HOT Magnum (250gph), and 2 Emperor power filters (280gph). So, my tank is very filtered for its size. Originally, it contained 10 Jewel Cichlids and they were doing very very well for about 9 months (~4" long each!). All of a sudden, about 3 months ago this white slimy film started growing on EVERYTHING, including my fish. After treating for both bacterial and fungus infections, the problem seemed to subside (i lost 4 fish through the process). After they started looking healthier, I took everything out of the tank and steralized it in boiling water (that was a fun weekend project, lemme tell ya). Once everything was replaced back in, i started changing the filters one by one as not to upset the already upset biological balance in the tank. Then, week by week the fish would redevelop what looked like their outer layer of skin turning white and peeling off. Finally, all of my fish were dead.

I let the tank sit for about 4 weeks and cycle, and cycle, and cycle, I added a massive quantity of antibiotics and anti-fungal stuff for the first week just to kill anything remaining. All of my water stats came back fabulously, as far as they are concerned, I have the perfect tank. I then bought 5 feeder goldfish to see how they faired before adding anything too expensive. Within 6 hours they too were covered in the white-peeling-off skin thing. It has since been 3 months, and I Have no idea what to do now. This afternoon, i went and got another 5 feeder goldfish, and already 4 of them are showing signs of this nasty skin disease. I've been performing 20% water changes on the tank daily to every other day for the past 3 months.

What is left that I can do other than basically trash everything I have because this seems to be the invincible infection. Has anyone ever seen something like this before?

 

[Alien Anna]

Sounds really nasty. My concern would be that its fish TB, or some sort of poisoning (such as heavy metal poisoning).

I've considered what I'd do and I think this is one of those rare situations were a total tank strip-down is required, plus replacing all your gravel and filter inserts. Then sterilise everything in hypochlorite bleach solution which you can then rinse out with gallons of water with extra dechlorinator in it. Do make sure your dechlorinator can treat chloramines as that is another possible cause of the loss of your fish. If it is a pathogen of some kind hot or even boiling water may not have killed it - many spores can survive astronomically high temperatures.

I had a friend with this problem - turned out her cleaning lady had been polishing the glass with Windolene (an ammonia-based cleaning agent). The poor woman never confessed but we found the tell-tale signs in the corners of the glass and I noticed the smell. You may need to do a bit of amateur detective work. Consider things like crop spraying, fumagation, carpet cleaning and anything involving chemicals.

Also check all the rocks in your tank and make sure they're all aquarium safe. If you have any doubts about them, chuck them. Some rocks may contain heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury or lead which will poison your fish. Check any bogwood or gravel for sulphur dioxide (smells like rotten eggs) as that can poison fish.

Once you have re-assembled your tank, please consider fishless cycling as its a lot quicker and at least you can take that out of the equation if anything happens to your next lot of fish. Good luck and let us know how it goes.