White spot on black neon tetra

Hello everyone,

I'm fairly new at fish keeping I set up my tank last October and then hadn't put anything new in for a good long time until about 10 days ago when I added a Betta, 2 new plants and a piece of drift wood.

I just noticed that my black neon tetra has a white spot on his head and the skin on his head doesn't look too great in general. He is feeding very well although seems a bit flightly.. he is not too keen on me staring at him to try and get a better look! As far as I can tell it doesn't look convincingly like Ich it's mainly one larger white spot then it looks a bit like peely skin skin over his nose and back to top of gills but could be more spots. I've tried to take a picture... is it worth increasing the temp a bit just in case? Any other suggestions?



My black neons never did well, they were first in and I think were very stressed so soon I only had the one left out of 6. I currently also have 3 ottos (out of initial 4), 2 bronze corys (out of initial 4), 5 neon tetras (out of 11), 1 betta (new fish) and a LOT of cherry red shrimp... 100-200 probably. I hadn't had any sick fish in quite a long time. I have quite a lot of plants in the tank too.

I hadn't planned on getting the Betta but stupidly took the kids to buy new fish... we did choose one that was ignoring other males in tanks nearby and I have never seen him react in any way to the fish that were already in my tank since adding him and they don't seem particularly bothered by him but I guess the black tetra could be a bit stressed with the new addition. Luckily the Betta seems a poor shrimp hunter too.

Any advice greatly appreciated, thanks!
Laura

(PS that is a photo behind the tank! they are not stared at from both sides )

First things first.
How big is your tank?
What are your parameters? (Ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, ect)

Second thing.
It is HIGHLY unadvised to have a Betta with any other fish. It doesn't matter if he's ignoring them now, it's highly likely that once he gets settled in, he'll start seeing the tank as his territory and kill the intruders. I recommend either getting him his own tank (preferably 5g or larger), or taking him back to the store.

Hi and welcome to the forum

Need pictures from both sides.

It looks like there is something in front of the fish, not actually on it. Better pictures might offer more info.

If the fish has a white bump on its nose/ mouth, it is probably a fat lip from swimming into something. These usually go away on their own after a week or two.

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If the fish are nervous and panic a lot, there is probably a water quality issue (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate or wrong pH).

How often do you do water changes and how much do you change?
Do you gravel clean the substrate when you do a water change?
Do you dechlorinate the new water before adding it to the tank?

What sort of filter is on the tank?
How often and how do you clean the filter?

How long has the tank been set up for?
How long have you had the black neons?

foxgirl158 said:

First things first.
How big is your tank?
What are your parameters? (Ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, ect)

Second thing.
It is HIGHLY unadvised to have a Betta with any other fish. It doesn't matter if he's ignoring them now, it's highly likely that once he gets settled in, he'll start seeing the tank as his territory and kill the intruders. I recommend either getting him his own tank (preferably 5g or larger), or taking him back to the store.

Click to expand...

Tank is 20 gallons, nitrites are perfect, there is a little nitrate. Knowing how much to feed the shrimp often has me stumped! The fish were over fed by my husband while I was away for a week.

Yeah the Betta was not entirely planned... I took the kids to choose the fish (I had decided against a Betta and then in the stress of the moment I sonehow got one). There did seem to be a lot about how to successfully introduce a betta online. I'll keep a close eye... there are only the other 6 tetras that are using the same space and the shrimp keep him distracted!

Can you post a picture of the whole tank? This may or may not work. But we need a feeling for the whole tank. Thanks

Colin_T said:

Hi and welcome to the forum

Need pictures from both sides.

It looks like there is something in front of the fish, not actually on it. Better pictures might offer more info.

If the fish has a white bump on its nose/ mouth, it is probably a fat lip from swimming into something. These usually go away on their own after a week or two.

------------------
If the fish are nervous and panic a lot, there is probably a water quality issue (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate or wrong pH).

How often do you do water changes and how much do you change?
Do you gravel clean the substrate when you do a water change?
Do you dechlorinate the new water before adding it to the tank?

What sort of filter is on the tank?
How often and how do you clean the filter?

How long has the tank been set up for?
How long have you had the black neons?

Click to expand...

Thanks for the welcome!

It's a snail in front!

Hmm I guess the cory's are a bit skittish too thought that was down to there being too few (although don't want to get more as I mainly have gravel... one jumped in the bag when I was buying ottos and they said just to take it then I got friends but learned that my tank set up is not great ofr them as the like sand). Didn't realise that oculd be a water quality indicator and yes I've now realised that the nitrates are a bit high I think... those test strips were pretty unreliable when I used them lots early on. Nitrate is probably a bit of over feeding... hubby was feeding while I was away and I came back to a population boom of shrimp, snails and algae!

I do water changes about every 7-10 days and change 10-20%. I used to hoover the gravel but nothing much seemed to come off and I have a lot of planted plants so I can only hoover a limited area. I use Seachem Prime for the new water and also add Seachem stability every water change too.

Tank set up since beginning of last October. I have a shark filter (I bought what was recommend in shop for my size of tank) and I swapped one of the sponges for ceramic beads. I clean it in the removed tank water every water change. The black neons were the first to go in at the end of last October but most perished quite dramatically within the first few weeks :'( They always swam at the top in a close group agains the filter flow now I know a bit more I think they must have been pretty stressed. They then one by one suddenly lost control and died within half an hour to an hour.

I'll try and get some better pictures.

Thanks for your reply

itiwhetu said:

Can you post a picture of the whole tank? This may or may not work. But we need a feeling for the whole tank. Thanks

Click to expand...

Ooh I like your signature My kids wanted the boat but the fish and shrimp don't seem to mind too much and use it quite a bit.

I only use the light for a few hours each day if at all. I scrub the algae off the front glass but left it on the back for the ottos. I've started feeding the plants too so they can better compete with the algae.

Try doing big (50-75%) water changes and gravel cleans every day for a week and see if it improves. Then do a 50-75% water change and gravel clean once a week after that.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks.

Monitor the fish and if it gets worse, post more pics.

Your tank looks great, take a deep breath, and relax. Everything is in the right place. Just chill out and enjoy. Your Neon's will stay at the bottom, your Betta at the top. Just observe what happens.

I'm going to chime in to support what was already said. Go with water changing. I wouldn't do as much as Colin, but he may be right. I see a slightly misshapen head on the fish - she wouldn't be a black neon movie star except in a character role. There might be a little infection there, but it's questionable.
When in doubt, up the water changes and keep an eye on her.

Hmm I'm thinking it's looking a bit more like white spot... there is only white spots on the head (the spots that look like they are on the body in the last shot is something in the water not on the fish).
bit blurry but looks like skin being lost across nose from some angles and spots from other angles. White spots on body and top fin below are just reflection from something in the water, the 3 white spots on the head are on the fish.

It's not white spot.

It looks like excess mucous. You can try salt, it might help.

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SALT
You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium 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.

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, Bettas & 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, fish, plants, shrimp or snails.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week using only fresh water that has been dechlorinated. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that. This dilutes the salt out of the tank slowly so it doesn't harm the fish.

If you do water changes while using salt, you need to treat the new water with salt before adding it to the tank. This will keep the salt level stable in the tank and minimise stress on the fish.

When you first add salt, add the salt to a small bucket of tank water and dissolve the salt. Then slowly pour the salt water into the tank near the filter outlet. Add the salt over a couple of minutes.

You mentioned having both otos and shrimp.
I have 2 types of wafers for this..algae wafers that only the shrimp touch and these Hikari wafers with spirulina that the otos will grase at.
I personally feed the Hikari ones every 2 days
And if the tank starts getting algae of any kind I feed the ones I know the otos don't touch I can grab you pics of them later if you want them

Lama_cama said:

Ooh I like your signature My kids wanted the boat but the fish and shrimp don't seem to mind too much and use it quite a bit.

I only use the light for a few hours each day if at all. I scrub the algae off the front glass but left it on the back for the ottos. I've started feeding the plants too so they can better compete with the algae.

View attachment 165350

Click to expand...

Plants are not going to do well on only a few hours a day of light. If you’re keeping the light down due to algae problems, weekly water changes of at least 30% should help with that since fish waste contains a lot of stuff that feeds algae. Also your light may be too bright or too concentrated - to me in this pic it looks like most of the light is concentrated in the middle of the tank where there are few plants but maybe that’s just the pic. I know some hoods are like this, I used to have one and it makes no sense for a planted tank to have the two ends in darkness since that’s usually where you want more plants! At any rate you can dim your light and spread it out better by raising it (which may not be a great option) or just dim the middle by putting something over parts of it, like maybe wax paper or use some dark tape strips, whatever will prevent all of it from hitting your tank. Also if your light is LED it may be dimmable. The LED strip I got for my tank from Amazon has a programmable timer, so I can have it come on at a certain brightness, ramp up to a higher one, then down again, etc. But if you don’t have that option just a regular timer that gives 8 hours a day of light will help.

I wouldn't use salt with the cory and otto; in theory they can handle some for a short period but they are sensitive to changes in tds and you could very well kill them.