Fungus on keyhole cichlid

[Richpg]

Hi. One of my keyhole cichlids has developed a fungal looking growth on one side near her head / gill. Any suggestions on how to treat?
Should I remove her to a separate tank to treat as I can do easier water changes and add some medication.
She is maybe 5 years old now.
I do weekly 15%water changes with day old heated and circulated tap water.
I don’t measure water parameters. Fish were breeding until a week ago laying eggs.

 

[GaryE]

I would use a hospital tank and treat with malachite green with formalin in it. I don't think it's fungus, but rather a parasite - a protozoan. So you would have to monitor the other fish closely.
With older fish, they sometimes get health problems that don't spread unless we ignore them. But they don't always rebound, and by their nature, they can infect a tank. Younger, healthier fish who haven't just burned energy spawning can at times fight them off.

That is a guess from a grainy photo though. That is far from reliable. @Colin_T has a post he pastes in to threads that looks at using salt. Maybe he'll see this.

 

[Richpg]

Thanks very much for the reply. I have a second cycled tank that I can use as a quarantine tank. Will have a read about medicating. Will try the local fish store for medication. I only have methylene blue at the moment. Will see what salt doses as well. Done it the other way around when I kept marines. Cheers. Richard

 

[Essjay]

Colin_T's advice on using salt is in the second post in this thread (the first post is quite long so keep going!)

What to do if your fish gets sick

If your fish ever looks sick or unwell, then the following steps might help. Test the Water and Clean the Tank. Test the water quality for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH and write the results down in numbers. Check it for general hardness (GH) and carbonate hardness (KH) too if you can, but...

www.fishforums.net

 

[Richpg]

Thanks very much. Bit of bedtime reading.

 

[jaylach]

I wonder if this is actually a fungus or parasite at all. To be honest I'm not all that great as to diagnosis and that is giving myself more credit than I deserve. Still I wonder if this could not be a mucus buildup possibly protecting an injury.

At 5 years I don't think it is age related as they have a lifespan of 10+ years.

 

[GaryE]

Usually what happens to to a scrape is that body slime covers it as the first line of defence. But you have to look to the colour, and that to me is "Dinoflagellate" or protozoan coloured. If it was a cut, a problem got in first.
To treat the spot is hard, because what you use could get into the eyes of gills. On a tail, you could treat it differently if it were acut. I would still use Malachite green and formalin - formalin is very nasty but it kills one common family of protozoans that the dye doesn't. It's also easy to remove after. Salt is just as alien to a keyhole, and hard to get out.

Age is difficult. They can live to 10 years in very rare cases, but generally, for a farmed fish, you have to think of anywhere from half to three quarters of that. 5 year old keyholes are an accomplishment, and say those fish are very well cared for. It's a sad fact most aquarists would consider them long lived at three.

 

[Richpg]

Thanks for all the help unfortunately despite isolating and medicating for the last 3 days I lost the fish last night. Positive from this fish is that it produced nearly 100 young in the last year which have been passed on to other homes. I still have 7 of her offspring.

Thanks

Richard