Possible Columnaris?

Hi, I am new here. Several weeks ago my tank went from beauty(I'm biased) to pea soup over night. It kept getting worse. 48:hours ago, I put a uv light in the filter 48 hours ago and I can finally see my fish again!!! However...... Now that I can see them well from the top, it kind of looks like someone took a push mower and made one line down the middle of their heads. A blue platy has lost color around its face, a neon tetra is missing an eyeball, most guppies are missing part of their fins, and a different platy looks like it is missing part of his upper lip? Of course I went to Google MD and I saw a thread on this page where someone mentioned something similar might be columnaris. I'm not sure what to do and I have no friends in the hobby. I am barely a year into this and am about to start my third and final every 2 week paracleanse treatment for a tapeworm issue that I caused, because I did not research the importance of quarantining plants. That's the only explanation I have for how that happened and I lost 3 fish before I figured it out. I might be over sharing, but I'm not sure what information is needed. She is a 26 gallon planted tank with ghost shrimp, a Betta that does not bother anything but the fry(yummy) 6 neon tetras, 4 otocinclus(I know I know. Two were DOA and I never did order again, but I will get 2-4 more when I figure out what's going on with my tank) and a handful of guppies and platys. Could someone please share some insight to my concern? I'm worried for my fishies..

It's not Columnaris. That disease appears as a white mouth and quickly spreads over the face and head, killing the infected fish within 24-48 hours of showing the white lips.

A second form of bacterial infection (similar to Columnaris) causes the red or blue lines on neon and cardinal tetras to fade and turn white. It can also appear on the back half of some common livebearers (platies, guppies) and makes them turn white in the infected area. The fish die within 24-48 hours of showing this.

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The damaged tails could be bites from other fish or poor water quality.

Since you have green water in the tank, we can assume there is lots of light and lots of nutrients. The easiest way to deal with green water is reduce the light and nutrients, do big water changes and add some live plants, especially floating plants, which use the light and nutrients.

If you are treating fish for intestinal worms, you treat them once a week for 3-4 weeks and do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate 24-48 hours later. You should also clean the filter when you do the water change. Filter media/ materials can be washed out in a bucket of tank water (without the gunk from the substrate) and the media is re-used. The bucket of dirty water is poured on the lawn outside.

Colin_T said:

It's not Columnaris. That disease appears as a white mouth and quickly spreads over the face and head, killing the infected fish within 24-48 hours of showing the white lips.

A second form of bacterial infection (similar to Columnaris) causes the red or blue lines on neon and cardinal tetras to fade and turn white. It can also appear on the back half of some common livebearers (platies, guppies) and makes them turn white in the infected area. The fish die within 24-48 hours of showing this.

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The damaged tails could be bites from other fish or poor water quality.

Since you have green water in the tank, we can assume there is lots of light and lots of nutrients. The easiest way to deal with green water is reduce the light and nutrients, do big water changes and add some live plants, especially floating plants, which use the light and nutrients.

If you are treating fish for intestinal worms, you treat them once a week for 3-4 weeks and do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate 24-48 hours later. You should also clean the filter when you do the water change. Filter media/ materials can be washed out in a bucket of tank water (without the gunk from the substrate) and the media is re-used. The bucket of dirty water is poured on the lawn outside.

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I was following aquarium co ops suggestion for the cleanse, which is dose(paracleanse) on day 1, dose again day 3, water change day 5, wait 2 weeks for eggs to hatch, repeat, wait 2 weeks and repeat for a third and final time. But you are suggestion every week for 3-4 weeks, so how would that work. I'm worried about an ammonia spike. The pea soup is just about gone as of today. Also, I had 20 ghost shrimp pre pea soup and there in not a single sign of shrimp existence at all vita like they just disappeared.

Paracleanse has Praziquantel (used to treat tapeworm & gill flukes) and Metronidazole, which is an antibiotic. Ideally, if you want to treat tapeworm, you buy Praziquantel on its own, or get Flubendazole, which treats tapeworm and round worm at the same time. Most common livebearers from Asia have more roundworms/ threadworms than tapeworms.

Section 3 of the link below has more info on treating fish with intestinal worms.

The worm eggs usually hatch after 7-10 days and the worms become mature within a couple of weeks. So a single treatment once a week for 3-4 weeks initially kills the adult worms and then the follow up treatments kill baby worms that hatch inside the fish.

If you get an ammonia or nitrite reading, do a big (75%) water change every day until the level is 0ppm.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

Colin_T said:

Paracleanse has Praziquantel (used to treat tapeworm & gill flukes) and Metronidazole, which is an antibiotic. Ideally, if you want to treat tapeworm, you buy Praziquantel on its own, or get Flubendazole, which treats tapeworm and round worm at the same time. Most common livebearers from Asia have more roundworms/ threadworms than tapeworms.

Section 3 of the link below has more info on treating fish with intestinal worms.

The worm eggs usually hatch after 7-10 days and the worms become mature within a couple of weeks. So a single treatment once a week for 3-4 weeks initially kills the adult worms and then the follow up treatments kill baby worms that hatch inside the fish.

If you get an ammonia or nitrite reading, do a big (75%) water change every day until the level is 0ppm.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

What to do if your fish has Stringy White Poop.

Fish do a stringy white poop for several reasons. 1) Internal Bacterial Infections causes the fish to stop eating, swell up like a balloon, breath heavily at the surface or near a filter outlet, do stringy white poop, and die within 24-48 hours of showing these symptoms. This cannot normally be...

www.fishforums.net

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Thank you so much for this information and the time you took to provide it. I was able to get a video of the white spot on my platys face and and hoping it might help with possible diagnosis.

It looks like excess mucous and could be from the fish injuring its mouth or the start of Columnaris. However, if the white on the mouth hasn't changed or spread in the last couple of days, it's not mouth fungus (Columnaris).

Clean water, gravel and filter usually help treat excess mucous problems.