Infection on Cory catfish mouth

[mikfab]

Hello everyone.

I have a julli Cory catfish that was fine this morning and all of a sudden has a white cloudlike film on his mouth and is really struggling. I'm not sure what to do.

1) Is this fungal or is it columnaris? Based on pictures I've seen it appears to be fungal but please help me understand this.

2) Based on that information, how do I treat him? Do I remove him and just treat him? Do I treat the whole tank?

3) Regardless of whether he makes it or not, how do I prevent this in the future? I clean the gravel and do partial water changes every weekend to keep my tank clean. Do I need to treat the tank with something to kill the bacteria or fungus?

My tank parameters: 36 gallons, ammonia is 0.25, nitrite is 0.25, and nitrate is 5-10ppm. I know this means my tank is not fully cycled. I didn't have great information when we started the tank and am now trying to deal with the cycling the best I can. We had an ammonia spike about a week ago and have since done several water changes and am testing the water every day and treating the water with prime.

Any help would be appreciated! I really want to get this under control so it doesn't effect more fish in the future and take out my whole tank.

 

[mikfab]

Photos

Here are the best photos I could get.

 

[libertybelle]

Since you’re cycling you will want to do water changes at least every other day and treat with prime for the entire tank volume to protect fish from ammonia/ nitrite. It’s possible a mouth injury got infected but I can’t really tell anything from the picture.

How long has the fish looked like this. If it’s columnaris it usually kills within a couple days tops so if it’s been a few days probability moves towards the infection following injury route. Do you have a quarantine tank? Sometimes things effect the entire tank and there’s no point separating to treat but if it’s just a fungus because of injury it’s usually better to treat in quarantine (some meds will stain aquarium silicone blue or adversely effect beneficial bacteria.)

What temp is the tank? You probably want it like 76 or lower to slow growth of whatever it is.

 

[mikfab]

My Cory actually died that same day, so it was really fast. All of my other fish look fine. I just want to make sure this doesn't happen again. It appeared to be a fuzzy-like mold coming off his mouth. Based on pictures, it seems like a fungas? But not sure. I just don't want this to happen to any more of my fish so I'm wondering what I can do to prevent it. I feel like I'm pretty good about keeping the tank clean so I'm just wondering if I should treat the tank with something to kill that fungas or bacteria so it doesn't get my other fish?

 

[Skai]

If the only place you see or saw this fungus or whatever it actually was, was on the now deceased Cory, I wouldn't treat the whole tank. Right now, I personally would put higher priority on just getting your tank through it's cycle and keeping the water changes going. Adding medication on top of a cycling tank might be a recipe for worse. I.e. stress or rapid water chemisty changes.