Unidentified source of scratching (currently treating)

[BetaGrumm]

Rift lake mineral salts. Cool I'll look into that.
And yes you did address the equilibrium. It's all I have for now until I can order something different.
I'm almost out of it so I've been looking for an alternative.

 

[Byron]

Keep in mind that you will need to prepare the water for every water change externally to the aquarium. In other words, in some sort of container. Once you get the GH where you want it, then you siphon this water into the aquarium. This avoids shocking the fish with different water.

 

[BetaGrumm]

Right. I highlighted in my water change description above that I use a 7 gallon bucket to prepare water in before adding to the tank.
Ideally I would have extra containers so that I can mix my change water and let it set for a while to stabilize before adding. I don't really much of any PH drift, so it hasn't been a top priority, but I think it would be a better practice overall to let my change water dissolve/stabilize before adding to the tank.

So while I'm here, removing the medication was the right call. The tank looks way better. I saw massive improvement in the fish last night. The fins even look like they're healing already. Everyone is looking much happier and no scratching yet.
We'll see how things go over the next week.

 

[BetaGrumm]

Hi all.
I wanted to circle back around and report on this. It's been almost a year since I last posted/saw this issue, and I'm happy to report I have solved this and learned a few things.

First off, thank you so much to all who chimed in.

TLR: It was a long, stressful battle, but I'm pretty sure I was dealing with flukes.
Solution was a triple round of API general cure. (I didn't mess around.)

History catch up:
Over the last year, I observed the scratching continue off and on.
I continued pouring hours into internet research throughout.
In July of last year my wife and I went on vacation for a week, and I returned and realized I had not drawn the drapes and the sun had hit the tank every day raising the temps dangerously high.
On top of that, my automatic feeder had failed.
I lost several of my glowlight tetras at this time.
This obviously caused some pretty severe stress in the tank and that turned the on and off scratching to a constant scratching.
Soon after, more symptoms were added:
- near constant head shaking
- clamped fins

As these two new symptoms progressed, I began treating for whatever seemed most logical.
Long story short, I knew I was losing the battle against an unknown enemy and racing against time, so from August through November I treated for just about every parasite I could think of, without change, until I finally realized the new symptom list matched some reports of flukes.
I hit them with three courses of API general cure (Praziquantel/Metronidazol), and all symptoms have since ceased. We are currently two months symptom free and everyone is looking better than ever.

During that time I have also built a nitrate reactor with some success to help out with water changes. I went from two 50% water changes a week, down to once a week keeping Nitrates under 10 ppm.
I need to rebuild it as it's a little small, but I learned a lot with it.

Speaking of nitrates, don't over feed your fish. Yes, you probably overfeed your fish.
It's a habit I think we all fall into from time to time. (I cleaned up my fish feeding habits/routine)

I stopped using Seachem Equilibrium as the powder form of the product did agitate the fish a bit, and instead began using a liquid GH supplement instead.
Because of this, the ph is now a lot lower then I would like, but they seem to have adjusted so I've left it alone. (I stopped using PH regulators during my last post)
I'm stilling looking around for the cichlid lake salts that were suggested. I have yet to try them, but would like to.

Hopefully this helps someone else who's searching around frantically trying to figure out why their fish are mysteriously scratching with no visible signs of Ich or Oodinium. (Or anything else for that matter).
The progression of head shaking and clamped fins are what sealed the deal on treating for flukes.
Thanks again.

 

[Colin_T]

This obviously caused some pretty severe stress in the tank and that turned the on and off scratching to a constant scratching.
Soon after, more symptoms were added:
- near constant head shaking
- clamped fins

These are typical symptoms for external protozoan infections as well.

The Praziquantel is probably what fixed the problem because it has been reported to kill white spot and gill flukes. If it kills white spot, it probably kills velvet and might even kill Costia, Chilodonella and Trichodina. However, I don't know of anyone who has tried using Praziquantel on these parasites but it would be interesting to test.

Metronidazole is an anti-biotic and doesn't do anything to external parasites and only treats internal protozoan infections and some internal bacterial infections.

 

[BetaGrumm]

I agree.
Which is what had me so confused for so long.
Ich and Oodinium seem to be the most common parasites as well.
The reason I'm confident in flukes was because I had already treated twice with Seachem Paraguard, and once with chelated copper.
Both of which would have addressed white spot and velvet.
Neither of which are reported to address flukes.
The Praziquantel finally did address the issue, and it is reported to address flukes.
Additionally, I never was able to positively identify white spot, or velvet.
Flukes are invisible to the naked eye by my research, which would explain why I never "saw" any signs of an infection. Only symptoms.

I would have used PraziPro or something that was just praziquantel, but it was unavailable locally at the time, and API General Cure was which contained enough Praziquantel to do the trick.