Help, Fish Covered in White Spots

[BartokTheDog]

Hello,

We have the following fish in our tank:

2 pictus catfish, first occupants, added 6 weeks ago
2 rosy glass barbs, second occupants, added 4 weeks ago
2 more rosy glass barbs, third occupants, added 3 weeks ago
1 gold gourami, fifth occupant, added 2 weeks ago --> just died a couple hours ago, no sign of problems 20 mins before he was dead (except that he hadn't been eating too much lately, but had always been like that)
4 tiger barbs, fourth occupants, added 1 week ago

16 gallon tank, Nitrite: 0, Ammonia: 0, tank has been cycled for a month. We change the water every three days, about 10%.

Earlier tonight we just noticed that our gourami had died. He was sitting on his side at the bottom of the tank, completely unresponsive. He had been swimming around fine before we saw him dead, but his nose might have been floating a little high, but not certain. There were no signs of any spots or irregularities on him.

We removed the gourami from the tank and put him in a hospital bowl to see if it might help - no luck. He is gone.

We left for about 2 hours, and when we came back noticed that both our pictus cats are covered in what looks like small salt crystals. Earlier today they had no sign of spots, but in retrospect they had been rubbing on things infrequently, according to my boyfriend. No other fish seem to show signs of spots or strange behavior, but might occasionally brush against a rock (could be just coincidental). Please, please, help us, these are our first fish and we love them.

Alison and Noah

 

[Sasha]

If the fish are covered in tiny white dots, the probelm is certainly a parasite called Ick! Don't worry! I had this probelm in the past and had very good sucessful treatments. The medication that I recommend is called Quick Cure. All of the fish that I treated with it have recovered. Ick can only be treated when it's at a certain stage of it's life. Raising the temperature up a couple degrees helps speeds up the life cylce of this disease and it's treated faster. That's about all the information about curing Ick and hopefully yout fish would recover! Good luck!

 

[BartokTheDog]

Thank you very much for the reply. I was just about to add something additional when I saw your post: we have a natural-looking yet plastic "rock" in our tank, and I noticed that it has some dime-sized patches on it that look like rust (though I know it can't be rust, because it's plastic!). Very dark brown. Makes me worry, based on some other things I have read here - what could be going on?

Alison

 

[Fat Boy]

Almost certain it's ICH, take a look at this LINK

 

[BartokTheDog]

Thank you to those of you who responded to me last night. For the rest of the Fish Forum members, at this point, I have to say I am not particularly thrilled with the level of the response I have gotten. I can now be certain that it's ick, but would have liked to have some more information specific to my tank. I went to bed last night after doing tons of research on my own (due to underwhelming response here), and not knowing exactly what to trust. Because it was so late when this started happening, I was not able to go to my LFS to get aquarium salt (even though I know that salt can be harmful to scaleless fish, like my two baby catfish, in anything other than small doses). I turned up the heat in my aquarium slightly (thanks Sasha!), to 82 degrees. Went to bed, leaving lights in room on, hoping might help (based on some other things I read online, though realizing that since no one here gave me any specific advice, it might not have been worthwhile at all). Woke up this morning to find my first baby catfish, Cornelius, dead. I tried to find and or do *everything* I could last night - and I didn't get much response that could really help me (as in "put in some salt" or "don't put in salt" or "go to LFS and get some x brand treatment, use 1/2 dose," or whatever. Now my other baby catfish, Maxwell, is going to die as well - he is on his last legs and I'm skipping work to take care of him, poor thing.

I am so upset that despite posting an urgent message, I was unable to help my fish. I understand that I can't blame my fishes' death on "lack of response", it's really frustrating that many people didn't even respond with some emergency instructions (again, I speak only for the people who were not kind enough to respond to me). Very disappointing indeed! I was accustomed to such great response from previous things that this situation is very disheartening.

Alison

 

[endparenthesis]

I'm sorry that your fish didn't make it... but I don't think the other forum members can be blamed for it. There are a great deal of threads on this board on ich alone... and volumes upon volumes of websites with every answer you could hope for. I'm sure you could have found a plethora of answers with a little research. That's how I cured my ich outbreak. There's a shortage of a lot of things in this day and age, but information isn't one of them.

I hope you have more success with Maxwell. Best wishes.

If it helps, I posted these links in another ich thread:

http/www.netpets.com/fish/healthspa/ich.html
http/badmanstropicalfish.com/articles/article2.html
http/fins.actwin.com/aquatic-plants/mont...8/msg00196.html

 

[BartokTheDog]

I understand that I can't blame my fishes' death on "lack of response",

I tried to make it pretty clear that I was not blaming other members for the situation. I do however find it disappointing that in this case, this large community of fish owners couldn't provide a wider response.

Thanks much for the links you posted. I appreciate your concern for Maxwell, and hope the same. Please wish us luck.

Alison

 

[SharpRhombus]

Hey guys,

Also wanted to mention that BartokTheDog my boyfriend's handle, not my handle, and that if any of you are irritated with my posts for whatever reason, you can consider SharpRhombus the culprit instead (that's me). I hope you all understand that I'm just frustrated from a difficult situation but I hope you will still consider my feedback. Thanks to those of you who tried to help (and those who wanted to but couldn't, or whatever else). Please wish my fishies well!

Alison

 

[endparenthesis]

I don't know much about catfish but I do know that they're more sensitive to salt and some medications because they have no scales.

Came across these (some of them mention catfish specifically):

http/freshaquarium.about.com/cs/disease/p/ich.htm
http/www.corydorasworld.com/ich.htm (argh, my eyes hurt now )
http/www.wheelpost.com/Ichfish.html
http/www.fishjunkies.com/Diseases/ich.php