Mollie with white spot?

[Blue41]

Hi,
Please advise me what to do next.. I have a 50 l tank, it’s been set up with fish in 5-6 weeks.. 3 mollies and 6 platys.
Last week we noticed a male mollie had white spots and became so unwell it died, the others had white spots too and we got the treatment carried it out straight away as per the bottle, removed filter sponges for the duration and the full cycle ended yesterday. So I replaced filter sponges and noticed another mollie acting strange sitting near the top of the tank. Tested the water and it was full of nitrates and nitrites which I assume has happened due to no filter sponges in situ. Today things haven’t improved much and my mollie that was acting strange has developed the white spots. I was advised by the pet shop to only commence white spot treatment if water quality was optimum which is not the case. What do I do?

 

[Aiken Drum]

Im presuming you treated for ich? What treatment did you use/are you planning to use?

The reason you are seeing nitrite is because you arent cycled. There are a few reasons why you might not be cycled.

- You never was cycled in the first place.
- Removing filter media killed off your cycle.
or
- Your ich medication killed off your cycle.

Are you seeing any ammonia in your tests? What are the water parameters you are seeing in your tests? pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate?

Nitrate is the end product of the nitrogen cycle and is a good sign.

 

[Blue41]

Im presuming you treated for ich? What treatment did you use/are you planning to use?

The reason you are seeing nitrite is because you arent cycled. There are a few reasons why you might not be cycled.

- You never was cycled in the first place.
- Removing filter media killed off your cycle.
or
- Your ich medication killed off your cycle.

Are you seeing any ammonia in your tests? What are the water parameters you are seeing in your tests? pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate?

Nitrate is the end product of the nitrogen cycle and is a good sign.

Hi, thanks for your response..
The treatment used was interpet anti white spot +
I assume I was cycled to begin with as I had 0 nitrite and 10-25 nitrate readings before commencing treatment?
Tests now are showing;
PH - 6.4-6.8
Ammonia - 0-0.5
Nitrite - 5.0
Nitrate - 25-50

 

[Aiken Drum]

Ok. Well first thing you need to get your water clean, so daily 50% water changes until your ammonia + nitrite combined are no higher than 0.5ppm.

That product contains malachite green which can kill off your beneficial bacteria and crash your cycle.

The thing with ich medications is that it only kills off ich in its free swimming stage. It says that on the instructions. After infecting your fish, it feeds on the fish, this is when you see the classic signs. Then it drops off and finds its way into the substrate for some time to reproduce, and then goes into its free swimming stage at which point your treatment can kill it off. The free swimming stage can be several weeks after your infection clears up.

Whats happened to you is you treated while the fish was infected at which point the medication isnt doing anything. The feeding stage lasts a week or so and your fish either survives this or it doesnt. Higher water temperature speeds up the ich parasites life cycle, shortening the infection stage, giving your fish a better chance of survival. You then carry on dosing medication for a few days, but again your medication isn't likely to affect ich at this time either because it could be weeks beforeits free swimming again. You then stop dosing medication because you think the ich has gone, but its not, its going through its life cycle waiting to infect a fish with a weakened immune system. Which happened quite quickly because you lost your cycle.

First thing first, you need to recycle the tank. Also, raise the tank temperature to 30c (im assuming you are uk based and not using Fahrenheit) to speed up the ich life cycle and get it out of its system. Do you have a quarantine tank? Much better to heat treat in a QT so as not to stress the other fish.