Green Cory Question!!

[Vampytetraa14]

Hello. I’ve had this Cory for months now, but only now I see these little white spots on him. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I feel he is less active than usual. All my other Cory’s have been fine and act normally. Is this ich? Something else? Please help!! Thank you.

 

[CassCats]

View attachment 358077
Hello. I’ve had this Cory for months now, but only now I see these little white spots on him. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I feel he is less active than usual. All my other Cory’s have been fine and act normally. Is this ich? Something else? Please help!! Thank you.

This is epistylis not ich, notice some spots are larger than others. This is a bacterial problem instead as epistylis feeds off bacteria.

Swap your substrate to sand, gravel harbours too much nasty bacteria for cories and they can't sift naturally as they should on gravel.

There are a few options for treatment:

 

[Colin_T]

The fish is covered in excess mucous. The white marks could be related to this or something else.

Need more pictures of the fish to positively identify the issue.
Post a picture showing the entire aquarium?
How many Corydoras do you have in the tank?

What is the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH of the water?
What sort of filter is on the aquarium?
How often and how do you clean the filter?

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?

How long has the fish had the white marks?
Have you added anything new to the tank in the 2 weeks before this started?
What other fish are in the tank?

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You don't use antibiotics to treat epistylis. You use something that treats external protozoan parasites.

Antibiotics should only be used on known bacterial infections that have not responded to other treatments. Improper use and mis-use of antibiotics has lead to drug resistant bacteria that kill people, animals, birds, reptiles and fish.

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FIRST AID FOR FISH
Test the water for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH.

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 or until the problem is identified. 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.

 

[GaryE]

I see Epistylis.

Epistylis is a protozoan predator on bacteria that is pretty well always around. Its numbers explode when the water gets into a state where lots of food is around (dirty water or overfeeding). It doesn't feed on fish the way Ich does, but tends to attach to them. In some tanks, you can see the creatures on the glass when things get out of hand.

As they anchor on the fish, their stems give away their identity. They stick out, like the one on the nose in your photo. The stems can also burrow deep into the fish, and the wounds they cause can lead to secondary infections that are fatal.

It can stay low key in a tank with large pieces of gravel quite easily, as uneaten food tends to get trapped down there, and feed it. Overfeeding young fish for growth is how I've learned about it.

Antibiotics over the counter are illegal where I live, so I can't comment on how well they work. I wouldn't use them if I could.

I use a malachite green/formalin treatment. There are many such ich meds on the market, with formalin there for misdiagnoses of Oodinium parasites. I've been able to knock Epistylis back into its lair with that, over a few treatments. Then I could work on eliminating the lair. I've covered substrates with well rinsed playground sand, which has tended to mix into gravel and eliminate all the crevices. I've moved decor so caves don't block water flow, vacuumed the substrate and watched the temperature. Heat can help epistylis, and many a misdiagnosis as ich has killed fish.

Water changes (25 to 30% every 7-10 days, always and forever) and a critical eye on food amounts are crucial, after medication. But you can cure that fish and its companions.