HELP! SICK FISH !! : (

Question
We have a 55 gallon African Cichlid tank consisting of mostly mbuna.  Our tank seems to be infected with something.  Most of the fish have BIG open sores on their sides.  We have had this tank for about a year now so we know the sores are not from them picking at each other.  Some fish are much worse than others.  Many of them have lots of missing scales.  It looks like it could be a bacteria that is eating away at their sides.  Some appear to have white around their lips (lip fungus?).  We did some melafix for a week, and nothing was cured.  We just started with the quickcure last night.  We did a 25% water change (and added salt) after finishing with the melafix.  We feed them omega one cichlid flakes and HBH supersoft frozen food alternative with Krill. We have had 3 fish die over the past couple of weeks.  We are very upset about this whole thing and are willing to try anything to get our healthy tank back again!

Answer
HiYa!

Sorry to hear about your loss.

Ok just because you have had the tank for a year and the fish have been getting on fine does NOT mean that they can't just have turned on each other. Fish can live happily side by side for an x amount of time and then all of a sudden just start turning on each other. It's not uncommon.

I would recommend doing a 50% water change (water changes help speed up the healing process in fish as it greatly improves the water condition and the fishes environment) and then adding a combination of both Melafix and Pimafix together to get the boost of both medications. The fungus around their mouths sounds obviously like Mouth Fungus which is very contagious and may explain why its spreading among your fish.

Hope this helps! Cheers!

Rach