[Peter Finke]

Jacob, I told you earlier that such scratching can have many causes but the main in Oodinium. In the first stages the parasites are too small to be seen with our normal eyes. We had many cases whre even the best experts didn’t see the picture they knew as standard-appearance of Oodinium, but being the best they new: that’s Oodinium, an indicator of some sort of weakness. You may have provoked that but your mistaken measuring of the false pH.
And therefore I advise you once again to get hold of the only medicine really of help, namely the substance 2-amino-5-nitrothiazole. I even told you a producer (in a former posting). The original substance will not be sold in aquarium shops but in drug stores and shops for veterinaries.
But in Europe there are two or more producers of pet fish medicine, Tetra and JBL for example, who use that substance (and nothing else) for special products of them, namely “Hexa-Ex” (Tetra) and “Spirohexol” (JBL), but those medicines are not sold against Oodinium (there are others, but mostly they don’t work, forget them all), but they are sold against the “hole-disease” of Discus. Forget it and buy it: it’s an effective and safe medicice against Oodinium, especially in that early stages.
There must be American partners of these big companies. Perhaps you try to find them out in the internet. The websites of the aquarium products producer Tetra and of the aquarium products producer JBL will probably lead you towards that goal.