Help! Sick Cory And Freshwater Angel?!

for the last week ive noticed an almost cottony tuff on my sterbai cory's mouth (well a little above his barbles on his nose) and JUST today within a matter of hours actually after adding 2 more baby freshwater angels to our tank, our black and white freshwater "Gil" has some spots on his Ventral Fins cannot tell for sure if they are cottony like the sterbai or not as he wont sit still long enough but i am pretty sure they are the same.. i treated with melafix but i just want to know if this is what it could be or if i should worry about another case of Ich

Note: These results might not be correct as the test strips im using are very old i needed some and my dad gave me ones he had from a long time ago, no clue as to how old but ive used them over the course of a month and nothings changed so i will be buying other test strips as soon as i can but for now here is what the crappy ones i have say.

Tank size: 55 Gallon Bowfront
pH: 8
ammonia: test kit doesnt have ammonia levels! sorry
nitrite:0 - .5 ppm
nitrate: 20ppm
kH: High alkalinity (300)
gH: Very Hard 300
tank temp: 80

Fish Symptoms (include full description including lesion, color, location, fish behavior):
white cotton tuff on sterbai cory nose, and possible white cotton tuff or maybe ich on ventral fins of freshwater angels

Volume and Frequency of water changes:
weekly - biweekly water changes of around 30%

Chemical Additives or Media in your tank:
just added melafix

Tank inhabitants:
1 sterbai cory, 4 bronze cory, 1 upside down catfish, 6 cherry barb, 6 rummy nose tetra, 5 freshwater angelfish, common pleco

Recent additions to your tank (living or decoration):
added 2 baby freshwater angels this afternoon

Exposure to chemicals:

Digital photo (include if possible):


sorry the picture is really bad, i just have a camera phone and it doesn't take good pictures.

i posted a topic earlier so sorry but im posting another one im kinda freaked out. Everyone is eating just fine and still active but on my Sterbai Cory's nose is a white round fluffy looking ball that today looks like its startin to string out a bit, i also have the same thing on almost all my freshwater angelfish's ventral fins. what is this... and what can i use to treat it? so far have been using Melafix is this ok??

In my experience, cottony looking patches/tufts are fungal? Melafix is an anti-bacterial treatment where Pimafix is anti-fungal...I am at present treating a cottony/fluffy looking patch on my Silver Dollar with Pimafix, I'm at day 4 of 7 and it is almost gone.

I may be wrong though...

thank you im glad someone finally wrote back. kinda dissappointed in the fact my post has been sitting there for a few days with to response. and i just googled pimafix vs melafix and your right. so we are picking up some pimafix tomorrow. hopefully it cures whatever is going on. thanks much!

May be cotton wool disease from the brief description. Put your symptoms on the net & see what you get back. I wouldn't add treatment until you gave an idea what the problem is however I'm just a novice myself so take ur with a pinch if salt!!
Hope you get it sorted though.

I merged the two topics together for you.

I had an outbreak of "cotton mouth" with my trilineatus cory several months back. It's actually a bacterial infection, not a fungus, so needs to be treated with antibiotics. This will affect your filter media, so once you start treatment you'll likely need to cycle again.

You mentioned test strips ... these are notoriously unreliable. You need to invest in a liquid test kit such as Nutrafin, API or Salifert to get accurate readings.

Start with a huge water change, as much water taken out as will allow the fish to still swim upright.

ok im really at a loss of what to do... my melafix bottle says to use when adding new fish or when these symptoms appear, ragged or split fins, cloudy eyes, whitish cottony tufts on mouth, open sores or blood streaks in fins and or on body. (says for bacterial fish infections). my pimafix that we just got today and after explaining to our LFS what was going on with the angels this is what she recommended. says it treats fungus or cottony growth on fins and body and redding of fins and body. treats fungal infections. i started the pimafix today. so should it ry the other 6 days of this and see if i notice improvement? because im assuming i cannot do then both at one time XD

oh boy. i wish fish could just always be healthy and never get sick!

You can use both together BUT READ what it says on the bottles as to what fish can be treated with them - I'm thinking of your cory's, pleco and shrimp here. I do NOT know if you can use Melafix and Pimafix with these fish.
Someone with better knowledge than I will be able to advise.

David

update: not sure how car i am into the treatment process im going to guess at about 4 days. ive noticed a SLIGHT (and i do mean slight) improvement in some of the angels ventral fins but have noticed absolutely no improvement on the sterbai that has what i believe to be the same thing. advice would be great...

Hi KRamgren89,

Before you do anything else but water changes, please be sure of your diagnosis. If you have ick in your tank, the infected fish will have small dots that resemble what it would look like if you sprinkled salt on them. While it's possible for corys to get ick, it's fairly rare. It would be more common among your other fish.

It sounds like your corys have a fungus which followed a bacterial infection. The fungus is not, by itself, all that dangerous. The bacterial infection is. This is a picture of a badly infected B. multiradiatus that is undergoing a salt bath to clean it up before putting it back in its Melafix treated tank. You can see how this kind of disease can quickly rot away their barbels. It's the same with corys.



Next you should try to figure out what caused the problem and resolve it. Usually there is some kind of stress going on. This can weaken their immune systems and cause them to be more likely to come down with an infection, even by bacteria that normally lives in the tank and would not ordinarily bother them.

Some of the common stressors are poor water quality, overcrowding, uneaten food in the substrate, fluctuating temperature (especially quick increases) aggressive tankmates, etc. If you correct these conditions you will be providing them with a healthy environment in which to recover.

Keeping treating with Melafix and Pimafix. Yes, both.

Water quality is a huge issue when dealing with illnesses like this. Keep your water pristine. I would be doing 50% water changes daily.

Another problem regarding water quality is that we can't be sure of yours. You need to go get a liquid master test kit. API brand comes highly recommended. Strips are inaccurate at best.

thank you everyone for the imput. as for the 'slight' increase we noticed, yea not so much... currently all 5 angels are infected with whatever it is thats going on. i'll try to explain a little better. for my Sterbai Cory it really just appeared one day as a round cottony looking patch above the barbles a bit. and hasent changed at all even since starting treatment. there was 1 day in there where it looked a little stringy. For the angels it first appears as the same perfectly round cottony looking circle, some days it looks stringy others just solid. and a few of the angels have these cotton looking balls and then under them from whatever point they start to the end of the ventral fins looks like there is a clear slimy looking substance overing their fins. today i noticed our black marble angel lost part of the ventral fin just a tiny bit. and one of the baby angels lost almost half the ventral fins..

as for the 'stresser' yea i narrowed it down to: for the cory it had to be switching tanks and being one of the only 6 bottom feeders that remained from the other tank. and for the angels they all got it the day i added the baby angels into the tank.

as for water changes. sounds stupid but i didnt know you could change water often during treatment. i assumed since the bottles say 'treat for 7 days then do 25% water change and treat for another 7' that meant for a week i couldnt do water changes. glad to know that i can! and will start right away tomorrow morning.

thank you again for clearing up that i can use both melafix and pimafix in my tank. only question i have for that is do i use the recommended dosage for both being i am using both medications (example: pimafix says use 5ml per 10 gallons. and melafix says use 1tsp per 10 gallons. so do i use the full 21ml of pimafix & 4.5 tsp of melafix everyday.)

as for fixing the stresser. once we can get whatever this is to go away, we are rehoming the baby angels to the woman who owns our local LFS - she has owned angels for a long time and said she will take ours once they are healthy. again for the stresser, we are rehoming the sterbai once he is healthy as well, they are 12.00 a peice here and we cannot afford to give him all the friends he needs so he will go to our lfs where they have a herd sterbai cory. we will be upping our broze cory numbers from 4 to 6 or 8, upping our rummynose tetra from 6 to 12 upping our cherry barbs from 6 to 10 and hoping that makes everyone happy and comfortable. we will also be sending our common pleco to the lfs as they are in need of large ones and trading him for a bushy nose or bristle nose.

Inchworm said:

Hi KRamgren89,

Before you do anything else but water changes, please be sure of your diagnosis. If you have ick in your tank, the infected fish will have small dots that resemble what it would look like if you sprinkled salt on them. While it's possible for corys to get ick, it's fairly rare. It would be more common among your other fish.

It sounds like your corys have a fungus which followed a bacterial infection. The fungus is not, by itself, all that dangerous. The bacterial infection is. This is a picture of a badly infected B. multiradiatus that is undergoing a salt bath to clean it up before putting it back in its Melafix treated tank. You can see how this kind of disease can quickly rot away their barbels. It's the same with corys.

Next you should try to figure out what caused the problem and resolve it. Usually there is some kind of stress going on. This can weaken their immune systems and cause them to be more likely to come down with an infection, even by bacteria that normally lives in the tank and would not ordinarily bother them.

Some of the common stressors are poor water quality, overcrowding, uneaten food in the substrate, fluctuating temperature (especially quick increases) aggressive tankmates, etc. If you correct these conditions you will be providing them with a healthy environment in which to recover.

Click to expand...

i am a million percent sure it is not ICH as i have been through that in a tank already (not this one) and know what it looks like. i am just not sure if the infection is bacterial or fungal or a mix of both (bacterial for cory fungal for angel) and unfortunately i cannot get pictures because i only have a camera on my phone and it takes crappy pix. as for water testing i'll be honest. until this tank that is running now ive never tested the water and in my defense other then the random fish dieing ive never had any kind of issues like i am having right now. yes i know that i need to get an api water testing kit but 1. neither pet store within my driving distance sells them and 2. you need a credit card or bank account to order it offline and i use neither and never have. so unfortunately all i can to is use the testing strips. and dont take this the wrong way. but i really dont want to hear anyone put me down for the way i keep fish just because i dont have a way to buy a liquid test kit and because i never tested water parameters until this tank. not saying you specifically were going to put me down but ive seen now people from this site have treated others for not being able to afford certain stuff for their fish and believe its completely unnecessary to people to judge and treat other people that way.

but thank you for the information all the same. i'll do everything i can do make sure all my fish remain healthy. i'll ask one of the pet stores if they can order in any liquid testing kits. but if not all i can do is use strips. i'll try my best to get pictures of what is going on so that maybe someone can see and help out a bit more.

Yes, you can use the full dosages of both Melafix and Pimafix in conjunction. Also, put an airstone in the tank if you can. Oxygen exchange is important when medicating.

When illnesses come around, clean water is one of the best medicines. Just be sure to do a little math and replace the medicine that you take out with water changes during treatment!