White Cottony Stuff

I just purchased a female guppy two days ago from our LPS, I had noticed she was a little weird looking a few hours after releasing her into the tank. She's got his white cottony stuff almost looks like its eating her skin between her top fin and tail fin. I took a picture, not very good, but its the whitish stuff you see.

I do not have a hospital tank or any other tank at the moment. I just dosed with Primafix (if that's how you spell it). I don't think I have any activated carbon in the filter in the tank.

What could this be? And am I taking the correct steps into treating this?

If you can, quarrantine the fish. It looks to me like a fungus, so you should ideally quarrantine the fish and keep an eye on the others, but other than that I'm not much help.
Bump for someone who might know more.

Treat with an anti-fingal med. No idea whats is available in Canada. I use Maroxy.

Well I woke up this morning and she was on the bottom. Poor little girl. That's the 2nd guppy that went on me from that batch I bought at the PS a few days ago. The other two aren't eating and have been staying near the top. I've hear not to buy my fish from there since they don't last, but that's the closet we have one around here.
Thanks for the help anyway though, I'll know for a next time

Thought I would just comment simply because I have literally lost two fish in 48 hours...I am pretty certain that it was Coloumnaris -aka cotton wool disease....just like your picture....very fast....I did not even get time to treat them :0(

I am new to keeping guppys and what not. I spent a small fortune on fancy guppies off ebay, and I added three males into my community tank with a couple platys. I guess the guppies flowing tail fins looked irresistible to the other fish because they were quickly nipped off. I removed the guppies into a separate tank, and that is when I noticed one guppy with the worst fin nip had fuzzy white stuff growing on the end of the tail fin where it was injured, as well as around its eye. I ordered pima fix but it didnt arrive in time, and I attempted to pull the fuzz off, gently. It came off the tail, with a tiny bit of tail, too. But around the eye was too dangerous as I was afraid it would cause more harm than good. The next day my poor little guy was so ill he couldnt make it one more day and died. I will say that the white fungus on the wood will in fact hurt your fish if they are already injured. I took the wood out, and continue to add pimafix and melafix. Good luck. I hope your fish buddies stay happy and healthy.

Hi Shaylynn and welcome to the forum

Don't expect a response to this thread because it's from 2013

If you have white fluffy stuff on driftwood it is fungus but it's a different type of fungus to the white fluffy stuff on fish. The stuff on the driftwood is harmless and goes away after a couple of weeks. The stuff on the fihs is dangerous and does kill fish.

Fungus gets into damaged areas of the fish and infects that. Then it spreads into the body and kills the fish. Keeping the fish in good conditions and preventing physical damage form occurring will usually prevent fungus form appearing.

The best way to treat fungus on fish is with salt.
You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), sea salt or swimming pool salt to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres of water. If there is no improvement after 48 hours you can double that dose rate so there is 2 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

If you only have livebearers (guppies, platies, swordtails, mollies), goldfish or rainbowfish in the tank you can double that dose rate, so you would add 2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres and if there is no improvement after 48 hours, then increase it so there is a total of 4 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, gouramis, loaches) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers, rainbowfish or other salt tolerant species.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria but the higher dose rate will affect some plants. The lower dose rate will not affect plants.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that.

I don’t know why old threads pop up sometimes but they do. Watch the dates posted.

Deanasue said:

I don’t know why old threads pop up sometimes but they do.

Click to expand...

People have problems with fish and search for similar topics to the issues they are having. Then they post and we look and it's an oldie. No biggy