Does anyone have experience treating columnaris in yellow perch in a coupled system? We have a high school teacher starting a new system with an outbreak. No real need to go into the potential stress/transportation/water quality/cycling scenarios/bath treatment options as we’re working with him on those basic issues, Just have not seen much on disease treatments in coupled systems. Targeted plants for this system are leafy greens, so this is a room temp (coolwater) system. Thanks in advance!
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Personally, I haven’t had the unfortunate experience of having fish with Columnaris in a close coupled tank and would think it would be difficult to treat without effecting the water quality. However, I would like to know for reference if it’s possible.
Research Gate is a good source information:
https://www.researchgate.net/search/publication?q=columnaris+disease
Something I found online:
Also consider:
Copper sulfate, Acriflavine, Furan, and Terramycin.
Alternatively:
Low cost and effective method is to quarantine the infected fish in a separate tank and expose them to low pH water using salt between 20-45 minutes at a time, ensuring the pH is no lower than 4.6
Same method is good for flukes.
Thanks for posting the the basic information and literature search on columnaris. This will be beneficial for those that have not dealt with it before. The question, though, is does anyone have experience treating columnaris in a coupled system, without moving to separate tanks?
Not sure if it this helps.
I tried using an acrylic divider with a rubber expanding seal to segregate fish without success due to leakage.
Then in another old tank, I submerged a clear plastic container into the main tank with an airstone and corralled the fish into it with bait to avoid stressing out the fish.
Switched on the airstone and slowly pumped out 40% of the water out of the container back into the tank, whilst slowly raising the container out of the water and hooked it on the edge of the tank so both container and tank water levels stayed the same.
I removed the bait and treated the fish for an hour with salt, syhponed the treated water out, whilst replenishing the container with water from the tank until pH levels became normal and then submerged the container back into the water and switched the airstone off.
Water temperatures fluctuated due to the airstone and salt.
Fish wasn’t too spooked.
Eventually, the fish left the container and I removed the container.
It’s been a couple of hours now, with no fatalities.
However, let’s see what happens in 24hrs.
Downside side of the experiment, resulted in the loss of water, salt, electricity and time. 
Just a handful of goldfish was used with this experiment as I don’t own any yellow perch.
I have however dabbled with Jade perch in a Nanjing AP system, lovely tasting fish but the locals are hard to convince to eat them.
For bacteria infections in fish intended for human consumption use either copper in a non plant system or a product called prohibit from your ag supplier its used in cattle and aquaculture and is certified for meat production intended for human consumption. Alternatively since it has cured lots of other bacterial infections you might also try LABs as well.
please stop suggesting things that will collapse the microbial population of the system again like the last thread leave the advise to people who actually do this for a living as what you suggested would nuke there cycling of the system and kill all of the fish even the uninfected ones…
Still curious as to why you post articles against aquaponics on an aquaponics forum and then want to pretend to be an expert with no back ground in aquaponics at all really. Theres no record of you or your claims of work any where online again please leave the advise to people who have done this previously.
Mr. Potentponics,
Who is trolling who?
Because of your edumacation you’re researching in English and fail to notice that I’m Chinese.
When researching in Chinese you will have better results and even then who uses their real name online these days.
I don’t need to prove anything, neither do you but the best advice is to stop trolling me and provide an alternative solution than a criticism.
Allow others determine their own epistemological interpretation of advice given.
Sorry for using big words and not crayons.
We’ve had columnaris with Tilapia. Our procedure is:
Quarantine tank [close supply and drain valves]
Slowly add 20 pounds of salt to a 1,200 gallon Tank [half on day 1 and half on day 2]
Slowly add 45 grams of Potassium Permanganate [KMnO4] per 1,200 gallon tank [half on day 1 & half on day 2]
Feed Medicated feed with florfenicol
Treat for 5 to 7 days and see how fish respond
- Once fish stop dying [no morts for 3 or more days], switch back to regular feed and feed for 5 to 7 days before reintroducing them to system [we don’t want florfenicol or salt in production system]
Water exchanges every 2 – 3 days to keep ammonia levels down while in quarantine
FYI
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I have successfully treated columnaris with 0.5ppm tank volume of povidone-iodine without isolating the tank once every two days for 3 treatments, and mixed feed with vitamin C and multivitamin (in case of vitamin deficiency and to boost immune system) and some traditional medicinal herbal powders (for liver health) for 5 days/week for 2 weeks. It didn’t affect my plants. However, I’m not sure if it affected nitrifying bacterias, as my system does not heavily rely on nitrifying bacterias. Water quality tests showed no changes in Ammonia and Nitrite.
By the way, I made the tanks in 2 groups, and give povidone-iodine to only one of the groups per day.