Platy With Fungus On Her Tail

[LauraFrog]

Hi again!

As some of you know, I live in a small country town in Australia. It's impractical and unprofitable for the pet shop to carry a wide range of fish or fish medication because there are too few serious aquarists to make it worth their while. My entire fish pharmacopoeia extends to some cheap and dodgy whitespot remedy and multi-cure (antifungal) picked up at coles/big w which are Australian equivalents of Wal-mart. I can get melafix but not until we go into town, as much as a week's time. The instructions on the multi-cure (which CLAIMS to be indicated in this sort of situation) are so vague that last time I used it I think I overdosed the fish.

It says to change 25% of water every 3 days and then retreat after replacing water. I added enough to retreat the whole hospital tank - it didn't say to do that, or to use just enough to treat the new water. Either way, the fish died. It's a foul-smelling generic brew and I have no desire to pull it out again to fix this fish.

For this case, which is far less serious than the last one I pulled out an old 6 gal (only put 5 gals of water in it) hospital tank - I set it up with an airstone but the only spare filter I have has been dry for months and I don't see the point. The fish is in there with a rock to hold the airstone down, a fake plant and a fake bark tunnel. She looks quite comfortable.

I added marine salt to a dosage of 6 grams/gallon (around 5 teaspoons of salt in the whole tank). It seems to be helping but it's a bit hard to tell - the tank is actually a very sturdy plastic container and the sides are too opaque to see something like the fine filaments of fungus around the tear in the tail fin. I don't have the water parameters for the main tank, but all of the other fish are fine and she was only in there a few days (very recent acquisition). I netted her and put her in a clear plastic bag and most of the whitish spots on the tail (not ich, spots too big and confined to tail around the injury) were gone but the main tear still had ragged white edges with fungus (her fins are clear). It's responding to the salt but I don't think the current concentration is enough to get rid of it. How much more salt can I safely add to the water?

Any help would be really appreciated. I googled about six variations of 'progressive saltwater treatment' with various keywords added and spent about half an hour looking up sites which all turned out to be useless. I can't find this anywhere.

I also heard about putting the fish briefly - as in five minutes - in very salty water. Does anybody know more about this? Does it work and is it safe? Is it indicated in this situation?

 

[WILDER]

How big are the white spots, do they have a tinging of red on the outside of the spot.
Or do they look like a cluster of berries or cauliflower.

 

[LauraFrog]

I've heard ich spots described as a grain of salt, and they didn't look like that. They were plain, white, and basically circular, the largest were slightly fuzzy at the edges but not red. The largest of the spots would have been about the size of the letter o. Maybe smaller, but bigger than a pinhead anyway. They were very easy to see because the fish in question has clear fins.

There were no spot anywhere else on her, I looked very closely and all her other fins and her body were fine. She isn't flicking, rubbing or shimmying and neither are any of the other fish. I'm pretty certain it's not ich. (The lights on two of the tanks at the dealer's are dead, can't get new bulbs (been trying for a week or more). He's a friend of mine (handed out a pile of free airstones when I was in a panic because I had to isolate fish while I was on holiday) and would never do anything like deliberately putting sick fish in a dark tank so nobody can see they're sick. He has a hospital tank set up marked 'not for sale' and I know she would have gone in there if he'd noticed. I held the bag up to the light and checked the fish before I paid for them so if I missed it it's my fault. I would have bought the fish anyway because she has stunning markings and is going to seriously advance my breeding project.

All the spots on the caudal fin are gone already (I only put her in the salt solution about midday yesterday - that's about 20 hours and the salt was weaker when I started because I didn't want to stress her). The two largest tears in the tail (one of them goes about 2/3 the length of the ray - yikes!) still have ragged edges which are whitish and still fungusy. I just netted her and bagged her to check it and she can still move without difficulty, it took me a few minutes to get her in the net and that's with very few decorations in the tank.

I saw a picture in the book (looking up everything I own and borrowed from the library) showing cotton-wool disease on a skunk corydoras. It was very advanced, it looked like somebody had seriously glued a ball of cotton wool to the top of the fish. The fungus growth was half the size of the fish. I think she might have the same fungus or a related one, but it's nowhere near that advanced. I spend a ridiculous amount staring at fish swimming around a glass box and I picked it up early. She might not even have had the fungus when I bought her - I wouldn't buy something like a neon or a cory (that all look the same) with a torn fin, but a uniquely marked platy - done it before and they recovered. Will her fin grow back when I get rid of the fungus?

 

[WILDER]

http/www.aquatic-hobbyist.com/profiles/d...columnaris.html

 

[LauraFrog]

I hope it's not columnaris...

It does seem to be responding to the salt, and I don't think that salt would kill bacteria would it? I got rid of the white spots on the tail and it's now confined to the edges of the tear in the tail. I might try and get a photo of it. Behaviour is normal, fish is eating.

I REALLY hope it's not columnaris, I have no access to any medication that might help and I really don't want to lose the fish.

 

[LauraFrog]

Oh brill. I'm starting to think finrot. Look at this. Photo sucks but I had to put her in a very small container and she did NOT LIKE IT.

 

[WILDER]

I would use a bacterial med to be honest as corys can soon go down hill fast.
The pic blury can't make much out to the honest.
You can get white edging to a tail and its finrot.
It sounds like the fish is mending it's self so her immune system isnt low.

 

[LauraFrog]

Sorry about the quality of the pic - it's the best I can get. The hospital tank is a sturdy container, and it's opaque so I had to stick her in a clear plastic container. I was holding it at arms length and the camera in the other hand.

Don't know what you mean about cories going down fast. Luckily I dont' have to worry about treating the entire tank because the catfish in it is a bristlenose which doesn't like much salt either. No cories at present because if I put a school of them big enough to be comfortable in any of my tiny tanks I'd have no room for anything else.

When I got up this morning half the platy's tail was gone. I got into the LFS at the first opportunity. They lent me a hydrometer and agreed that it was a particularly nasty strain and that if I couldn't get rid of it within a few days the fish would be dead. I've gone nuts and started doing really radical things (like leaving her for half an hour in created seawater - remarkable improvement and no signs of distress) because if I kill her from salt poisoning I don't think she'll be worse off. It doesn't look like I'm going to though. I have another fish with the top 2 rays of the caudal fin missing, and the edges are white. I've had her in salt (2 grams/litre) for three days - no change either way but I don't think it's whatever the other fish has.

 

[WILDER]

Is she struggling to swim with her tail gone.
Sorry thought you had corys.
Do you have a bacterial med.
Salt get rid of all the dead tissue and sometimes you take them out of the salt dip and half there tail gone.

 

[LauraFrog]

She's having no probs swimming, seems quite comfortable. Remarkable improvement, it's quite amazing. All of the white stuff is gone and I think part of her fin is starting to grow back but it might be wishful thinking. That's six half-hour dips in seawater.
Only meds I have are very cheap rubbish - whitespot remedy and generic anti-fungal. Can't get anything else. It frustrates me no end.

Whatever is causing this, I dont' have it in the main tank. Two of my platies got into a fight over a pellet - Lykewise took a sizeable chunk out of Syren's tail and it's growing back with no sign of fungus/white edges. So fingers crossed that the sick fish will make it. She looks a lot more comfortable, she's dropped the 'sit miserably on bottom of hospital tank all day' and started behaving normally again.

 

[WILDER]

Sounds promising.
Good luck.

 

[LauraFrog]

Even more promising - the most seriously damaged part of her tail is starting to grow back! It's only a few millimetres, and I suppose time will tell. I've reduced the dip time to 20 minutes in seawater every three or four hours during the day.
When should I stop dipping and put her back in freshwater? (She's in brackish water permanently, and seawater dips). It seems that the white edge on the fin is gone, but it was a very close call. Another few millimetres and it would have been into her flesh. I was getting ready to do something insane (ie clove oil the fish, dribble water down its gills with a syringe and hold its tail in a paste of salt until it started to wake up). I'm glad I didn't have to.

 

[SouthernCross]

Hey LauraFrog

I sympathize, I also live in Australia, and I understand how frustrating it can be not being able to get products locally.

If you're having trouble getting meds that aren't the crap Coles/Big Dub variety, can I recommend www.theaquariumshop.com.au. I've bought meds/food/other supplies from them many times, their prices are always better than my LFS, and their delivery is always fairly quick (3-4days after order, not inc weekends) and packaged well. They deliver Australia wide (and NZ I think).

It seems things are going better for you now, but its something to consider in the future.

 

[LauraFrog]

Thanks for the advice!

My parents are totally internet-banking-phobic so I've been doing my best to convince them that PayPal is safe. They won't let me buy anything over the net or mail order anything. I'll keep working on them!