Ich, finrot, fin bleeding problems

[ral]

A week ago or so, my small Plakat, Winston, recovered from Ich only to be followed a day or two later with finrot.

He seems to be recovering from the finrot. Well he has lost some finnage, but the spread seems to have slowed down or stopped. He is pretty active and looks like he is on his way to recovery.

On Christmas day Max and Gir, my VT and CT, had a terrible breakout of Ich. Worse than what Winston had and by evening were shwoing redness (like bleeding) in the fins.

The two were in a divided tank so one probably gave it to the other (stupid...stupid ....stupid)

I am trying to find the cause. The three who got sick are my 3 LFS Betta's but they all came from different stores and acquired different times. So I don't think that is the reason.

They used to (I took them all out and santized the tanks) lived in planted tanks, while my betta's from the the breeder importer only have substrate in their tanks (the two plakats were suppsoed to get plants today.... but am not getting them plants anymore, the halfmoon had a ploant but I removed it to prptect his fins).

Water change 50-60% every other day with a gravel vac to clean up the dirt.

Water is conditioned with dechlorinating solution and a pinch of salt.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Winston is being treated with a salt bath every other day, with daily 50% water changes.

Gir is in a 1 gallon tank.

While Max is back on the 5 gallon.

Both Gir and Max were threated for Ich using Malachite Green in small 4x4x4 contaienrs and frequent water changes were made to remove and free flotaing "Ich". Both Gir and Max are now being treated with Methalyne Blue.



Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[AlexsDaddy]

Did you use the same gravel vac to change water in all of them? If you did, this could be how it was transfered. As to treating, I have had no experience with itch so can't give you any advice there. Sorry!

Edited to add: I just found this site on itch. It says it's a protazoan parisite and can be treated with anything containing malachite green. Quick Cure by Aquarium Products (I found it at the dreaded Wal-Mart) contains this, so if you have any of that, or anything else containing malachite green, that may be a good place to start. Good luck!!

 

[nashnutny]

I had great success by raising the temperature to 86, and treating with clean water, salt and aquarisol.

 

[ral]

The Ich I can treat. Malachite Green works well, but the finrot is what I am more worried about. Threating them for Ich with MG seems to bring about finrot so I think I am going back to salt to threat Ich. No Aquarisol here

I purchased additional gravel vacs awhile back so 2 betta's share the same vac. The vacs are disinfected with water with a high salt and meth blue solution and risned with clean water. I have small siphoning tubes for the 3 isolation tanks.

Pretty sure it was easy for Max and Gir to infect each other with their divided tank though since water does travel from one side to the other

When I cleaned out the 5 gallon divided tank I found a lot of plant fallen rotting leaves and branches which the gravel vac did not get. Best I can guess is that it might have been poor wate quality due to rotting plants.

But Max and Gir lived in well planted tanks for a long time (30 days or so) without any signs of problems. Maybe too much buildup of rotten plants?