Epistylis

[Jenaliff]

Hello everyone! I'm new to the forum and I just had a quick question.
I just battled with a case of epistylis in my 55g. I lost all my fish except my 3 dojos and 2 nerite snails. I've done water changes and all to get the treated water out of the tank and make sure it's still cycled.
My question is, I just moved 2 of my platy babies (roughly 6-7 months old) over to my 55g since I have like 40 babies still, lol, and I wanted to know how long it may take to notice epistylis on them if it's still in the tank?
I was offered a decent sized common pleco for free, but I'm afraid there's still epistylis and I'd just lose him.

 

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Are you sure they had epitsylis?

What did you treat them with?
You can use salt to treat them and it kills the parasite on the fish and in the tank.

 

[Jenaliff]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Are you sure they had epitsylis?

What did you treat them with?
You can use salt to treat them and it kills the parasite on the fish and in the tank.

I thought they had ich so I treated them for that. It was just a huge mess all around cuz I ended up treating them with like 4 different things (not at the same time). I didn't find out it was epistylis til I only had 2 fish left and by then it was too late to try to treat them so I haven't really treated the whole tank itself other than water changes since then

 

[Colin_T]

If you gravel clean the tank and drain it completely, then fill it with chlorinated tap water, and add some salt, you can disinfect it and make it safe.

Do a complete gravel clean, drain and refill the tank.

Wash the filter and media under tap water.

Add a heap of rock salt (buy a bag of swimming pool salt because it's cheaper). You want so much salt in the water it doesn't dissolve and there should be a 1 inch layer of undissolved salt on the bottom.

Let the filter run for a couple of days and then drain and refill the tank a couple of times. Add some dechlorinator and cycle the tank.