Fungus

[gilaesther]

My betta has fungus. I treated with Wardley's Ick Away because it says it also treats fungus, and I already have it. That was Monday morning.

Now it's Wednesday, and my betta is laying on the bottom of the tank, and has been doing so since yesterday. He IS breathing, but nothing else. In fact, there's a cory that has landed on top of him, and then smacked him the face with his tail, and the betta has had no response.

He had medicine in the tank for 48 hours without the carbon in the filter. I put the filter back to normal in the hopes that the carbon would make the medicinal water safe neough for me to change without giving me health problems (the bottle says it's a carcinogen and teratogen, and frankly, I'm afraid to do a water change. I have a 3yr old and a 7 month old, and while I'm not pregnant now, I want to be assured that in the future, this won't come back to haunt me as a birth defect or aomething.

Any advice from anyone for the betta's and my sake?

 

[lilfishie]

try adding a bubble wall or another way to increase the oxygen in the water, sometimes meds remove the oxygen

 

[gilaesther]

try adding a bubble wall or another way to increase the oxygen in the water, sometimes meds remove the oxygen

Wouldn't that affect the other fish in the tank as well? There are four zebra danios and a corydoras catfish in there, and none of them seem to be adversely affected by either the medicine, or any change the medicine might have effected on the water quality.

 

[lilfishie]

not sure some fish i have found it affects more than others, when i added meds a while ago, can't remember what it was but my guppies were on the bottom and breathing very rapidly where as the tetras and plecos were normal. is there any way you can remove him from the tank?

 

[Dibari]

Definitely add a bubbler. Bettas need it and they hardly use their gills as much as their lungs, so definitely the other fish need it too.
Secondly, what does the fungus look like? If it's cottony strings or patches, it's columnaris and not fungus, and needs to be treated anti bacterially.

 

[gilaesther]

It loooks like someone dusted white fuzz on him. That needs to be treated with an anti-bacterial?

 

[Dibari]

does it look like this? -

 

[gilaesther]

does it look like this? -

No, nothing that dramatic. It's not obvious enough to even get on camera.

Let's see... a white line down that front fin thing that hangs down (I feel soos stupid not know what that's called... ), and light fuzz over his body. There had been fuzzy stuff that was more dramatic like in the pic on one of his spikes on his tail (he's a crowntail), but that went away.

 

[Dibari]

If it looks the same type of stuff, little amount or not, it's flexibacter and needs to be treated with anti bact meds, but to be safe, you could do anti fungal and anti bacterial together to knock it all out.
Good luck.

 

[gilaesther]

Thanks Dibari for all your help. I'll try and get some antibacterial meds as soon as I can.

 

[Dibari]

No problem at all.