Welcome to the Liquid Stunning

The incubus and I just spent the entire morning dealing with my aquarium.

I woke up today to another fish dead.  At this point, I only have 6 left.  I said, okay...whatever I'm doing isn't working.  Eff this.

So we went to the pet store and I looked over the various medications, and realized that I've been treating the tank for the past couple weeks for the WRONG DISEASE.

Now, it was a very easy mistake to make.  Both diseases have similar symptoms and life-cycles.  In other words:  fish start freaking out, fish then get lethargic and stop eating, and become covered in whitish spots.

Both are parasites.  Ichthyophthirius multifilis ("Ich") is a straight up parasitic fish louse, and Oodinium pilularis ("Velvet") is a parasitic skin flagellate.

However, both have slight variations that I wish I had noticed.  Velvet causes spots, but they are "finer" than Ich spots (which I noted, but figured it was just a weird strain of Ich I hadn't seen before).  Velvet causes fish to lose their appetite and gasp for breath.  Also with Velvet the skin starts to peel off.  It's disgusting.  I was watching my fish die as I treated and treated them for Ich, wondering WTF.

When I went to the store and looked through the medications today, it all became clear - it's probably Velvet, not Ich after all.

freshaquarium.about.com/cs/disease/p/velvet.htm

So, I picked up a bottle of Copper Sulfate and when we got back siphoned out 1/2 the tank water while the incubus took the top off the aquarium and scrubbed it outside to get rid of the water gnats.  (Yes, so gross.  Since the tank is sick and I can't use carbon filtration with the medicines, the water chemistry has changed and so algae is starting to grow, and opportunistic bastards like water gnats at the surface/on the glass of the light cover have cropped up.  Like I needed more problems.) 

Then I added aquarium salt to soothe their breathing and the medicine and plugged in my old aquarium heater to try and speed up the Velvet life-cycle.

This is all I can do.  The Copper Sulfate stays potent for a month.  Now I wait to see if anyone else dies.

I'm so pissed, because I don't consider myself an amateur "noob" fish enthusiast.  I mean, I'm not a trained Aquarist by any means, but I'm a fish nerd - I've had fish for years and read lots of books and paid attention in advanced biology in school.

I'm so mad at myself that this misdiagnosis cost ALL my beloved fancy goldfish, and possibly next my very sick 9-year-old Plecostomus ("Big Al the Algae Eater"), their lives. 

The Dr. House of fish, I am not.  :(