White spot on Denison barb

Hello, I noticed three weeks ago a small patch on the body of one of my Denison barbs that looked like a scrape injury from something in the tank. Today I noticed a couple more smaller patches, and on one of the original injury patch there is a white spot in the center. I am thinking it is a parasite of some sort.

Can anyone diagnose what is going on with this fish? The other three Denisons and fish in the tank do not have any symptoms. I am not noticing any flashing from the fish either.

They look like physical injuries where the scales have come out.

What other fish are in the tank?
Is there anything in the tank where the fish could get caught and rip scales off?

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To reduce the chance of infection, do the following.
Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge. This removes the biofilm on the glass and the biofilm will contain lots of harmful bacteria, fungus, protozoans and various other microscopic life forms.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week. The water changes and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in. It also removes a lot of the gunk and this means any medication can work on treating the fish instead of being wasted killing the pathogens in the gunk.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use the media. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens so any medication (if needed) will work more effectively on the fish.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration to maximise the dissolved oxygen in the water.

If there's no improvement after a week of water changes, post some more pictures and maybe add some salt.

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SALT
You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), swimming pool salt, or any non iodised salt (sodium chloride) to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres (5 gallons) 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 1 to 2 weeks.

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.

Colin_T said:

They look like physical injuries where the scales have come out.

What other fish are in the tank?
Is there anything in the tank where the fish could get caught and rip scales off?

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There are 4 adult Denison barbs, 1 Discus, 2 Corys, all in a 65 gallon tank.

I have a large ornament with holes in it that the Denisons love to zip through, and I thought the injury came from that. I have the bottom of the tank set up so barbs can swim around the obstacles.

The discus can handle salt, the corys may be unhappy with it and I really doubt the redlines will be good with it.

I cannot tell from the pics if the white is raised or flat. If flat, it might be columnaris.You do not show the fishes mouth in any of the pics. Do you see white lips or whats looks to be fungus in the mouth area? If so that makes it likely to be columnaris.

Also, the barbs would like cooler water and the discus warmer water and the corys are likely in the middle or closer to the barb temp.
https://www.seriouslyfish.com/species/sahyadria-denisonii/

Not difficult to keep in a well-maintained set-up, and does not tend to harm aquatic plants.

Since it naturally occurs in pristine habitats it is intolerant to accumulation of organic pollutants and requires more-or-less spotless water in order to thrive. It also does best if there is a high proportion of dissolved oxygen and moderate water movement, and weekly water changes of 30-50% tank volume should be considered routine.

Click to expand...

I have gotten red-lines as imports a couple of times and had to treat for columnaris once. The fish were picked up right off the plane by the trans-shipper from whom I picked them up shortly after. They did Q below.



I have kept the red-lines for a number of years. I started with some in a 45 gal. Today they live in my 150 with clown loaches. The barbs appreciate some open swimming space and tend to move as a group, more or less. They also like to cruise in the plants.

If you can rule out columnaris, and it isn't fungus, which is normally fuzzy, then the next likely answer is injury, But if all the fish go through the ornament shouldn't more than one have a scrape or two. If you can confirm it is columnaris, then the treatment needed is an antibiotic. You may see columnaris called Flavobacterium columnaris or Flavobacterium columnare.

TwoTankAmin said:

The discus can handle salt, the corys may be unhappy with it and I really doubt the redlines will be good with it.

I cannot tell from the pics if the white is raised or flat. If flat, it might be columnaris.You do not show the fishes mouth in any of the pics. Do you see white lips or whats looks to be fungus in the mouth area? If so that makes it likely to be columnaris.

Also, the barbs would like cooler water and the discus warmer water and the corys are likely in the middle or closer to the barb temp.
https://www.seriouslyfish.com/species/sahyadria-denisonii/


I have gotten relines as imports a couple of times and had to treat for columnaris once. The fish were picked up right off the plane by the trans-shipper from whom I picked them up shortly after. They did Q below.

View attachment 346241

I have kept the red-lines for a number of years. I started with some in a 45 gal. Today they live in my 150 with clown loaches. The barbs appreciate some open swimming space and tend to move as a group, more or less. They also like to cruise in the plants.

If you can rule out columnaris, and it isn't fungus, which is normally fuzzy, then the next likely answer is injury, But if all the fish go through the ornament shouldn't more than one have a scrape or two. If you can confirm it is columnaris, then the treatment needed is an antibiotic. You may see columnaris called Flavobacterium columnaris or Flavobacterium columnare.

Click to expand...

The mouth doesnt have anything on it and is normal. The white spot looks raised, so hopefully it is not columnaris. With the last water change on Saturday, I did reposition the swim thru tunnel ornament, so maybe that could account for the two new patches. I do have an ongoing battle with blue-green algae, so I just dosed the tank with erthyomycin. I will see if that helps the fish too.

My triple threat cure for BGA was

1. Remove as much as you can manually. Then do a big water change.
2. Add an antibiotic.
3. Black Out the tank for 5 days and do not feed the fish.

When done, vac well and change a lot of water. Then take steps to increase circulation some in the tank and make sure to keep up on regular water changes. Make sure that you are not over feeding.

@Colin_T, @TwoTankAmin
After treating the fish for columnaris by mixing Kanaplex and Focus in their food, I was able to cure it. I only saw improvement when I started to treat it internally. The lesions were patches of internal discoloration that were growing all over the body. After the first treatment, improvement was noticed the next day.