I have been keeping aquariums (planted) on and off for 40+ years :gw , much of that time with little knowledge (its more fun when you research and read as I have been doing now for about 6 months), and have never been hit with something like this. My bala's, and my clown loaches were hit realy hard, lost 3. My bala's then developed serious fin & tail rot. Then I lost 3 clown pl*co's which were what seemed to kick things off when I added them.

My plants look great -- bit of beard algae but nothing serious, ph is 6.8, kh is 7 to 8. Everything looked great.

Temperature to 84 and some salt killed of the ick, some antibiotics recovered
2 of my 3 balas with about 1/2 their fins left -- the fins are coming back nicely after about 1 week.

Again, never been hit like this before ever -- and tank looked and tested better than anything I have ever had. "Testing" -- I had just started working out EI dosages (new to me) when this all started, so my EI dosing starts tomorrow now that things have settled down.

Anyway -- thanks for the comment and thanks for the web site, I spend lots of time on it every day now reading back posts.