White Fuzz, Dead fish, sad daughter, mad dad.

[SkewedSpirit]

Hi All,

We are having an issue with our goldfish. We have a 20 gallon tank with 1 Calico Veiltail and one Red Oranda and 3 small "mystery" snails. My daughter had a small comet in there as well until this morning. We have a hanging power filter and no live plant material. All in all it is a basic kids tank. I have no idea what the levels are because I have never tested the water. About a week ago we started noticing that the comet had a fine layer of white "fuzz" over him, it was not concentrated in one area, just generally covering him, he was also lethargic and spent most of the morning at the bottom of the tank, the other 2 fish seemed fine. I did a 50% water change and thoroughly cleaned the gravel that afternoon and by the evening the comet was almost completely free of the fuzz and was swimming and eating normally. A few days went by and I fed them sparingly, thinking that the fuzz could have been caused by leftover food rotting in the gravel (which was embarrassingly dirty when I cleaned it)...however, even though I was feeding them about half of normal, I noticed the comet (now completely free of fuzz) was defecating a lot, not some much in volume as in frequency, far more than I would expect from the small amount of food being fed. Now this morning I found the comet floating, very dead. He was fine and swimming and acting normally last night at midnight when I went to bed and now this morning he is stone dead. Also, my beautiful big Oranda is starting to get the white fuzz. Please, any advice would help a lot. We really don't want to lose anymore of our fish. Thanks

[HUKIT]

The most important thing we can do when keeping fish is maintaining good water conditions, so that's the first step is purchasing a quality testing kit like the API master kit. The fuzzy stuff sounds like a fungus of some sort but can be a secondary infection from poor water conditions. The treatment is a medication like Fungus Clear by Jungle but after that the water condtions must be maintained to prevent further illness.

[Rutrag]

What Hukit said. It sounds as though your fish developed a fungal infection, probably as a side effect of poor water quality. About the only time you see this is as the result of a wound. Goldfish are notoriously messy in terms of the volume of waste they produce and that equates to frequent water changes. I'd also double check to make sure all of your snails are still alive as well, as a dead and rotting snail could foul your tank pretty quickly.

How large are your goldfish? If they have much size at all, I'd seriously make it routine to vacuum the gravel and change 50% of the water weekly. You might want to do this anyway if you're prone to feeding heavily.

[SkewedSpirit]

I have been doing pwc on the tank weekly, usually about 10 - 15% .. how does one check if a snail is dead? I know that is a silly question, but I really don't know.

[HUKIT]

Originally Posted by SkewedSpirit

I have been doing pwc on the tank weekly, usually about 10 - 15%

That's a good thing but without knowing what the actual conditions are you may need to up that to 50-60% per week.

[mfdrookie516]

Originally Posted by SkewedSpirit

how does one check if a snail is dead? I know that is a silly question, but I really don't know.

If it's not moving, smell it. They wont smell like roses when they're alive, but they will really stink if they're dead.

[Rutrag]

You can also look to see if the bottom part of the shell (normally a brownish-yellowish circle) is in place. It's like a trapdoor that seals the snail in when he closes up. If you can't see it, that's a dead snail for sure. Of course, if you move the snail and some dark grey goop comes out, those are the snail's remains.

[Somethingclever]

Originally Posted by mfdrookie516

If it's not moving, smell it. They wont smell like roses when they're alive, but they will really stink if they're dead.

I'm sure this wasn't meant to be comical but it made me lol.

Anyway yea i had a pleco that developed this crazy fungus, but it wasn't fuzz, it looked like he had this crazy ecto plasm stuff surrounding his body.

[jetajockey]

Originally Posted by Somethingclever

I'm sure this wasn't meant to be comical but it made me lol.

Anyway yea i had a pleco that developed this crazy fungus, but it wasn't fuzz, it looked like he had this crazy ecto plasm stuff surrounding his body.

sounds like excess body slime.

[Somethingclever]

Originally Posted by jetajockey

sounds like excess body slime.

Ya know that could totally make sense.

[SkewedSpirit]

yeah, two of my snails were dead, I just chucked them
the other seems fine. Just doing a pwc of about 50% now. My Calico Veiltail is dead, she just died about 20 minutes ago. This is getting really frustrating and pretty sad, I have lost two fish in literally the past 12 hours and my final fish looks like he is about to go any minute. I think I am pooched at this point

[mfdrookie516]

You definitely need to test ammonia and nitrite at minimum, and see what your readings are. If getting a liquid test kit (as strips aren't worth buying) is not an option, do daily 50% water changes for a while. You've got some issues going on that can't be determined without testing.

Sorry to hear about the losses though

[SkewedSpirit]

I will get on that as soon as I can. I just wish I could figure out what the [moderator edit] it was ... it looks like my fish is covered in dead skin or something. I thought it was velvet but the coating is white not brown or green etc .... I don't know. Thanks for the condolences. My daughter is pretty upset about her comet, and I have not even told her about the veiltail yet. It is like a fish genocide in our house today.

[HUKIT]

Any chance for some pictures of the fish that just passed?

[SkewedSpirit]

Never even thought to take pics. They we both given a nautical farewell so no chance of pictures now. I am thinking of taking all gravel and the two plastic plants out of my tank and basically just emptying it of extraneous things that bacteria can gather in. Thoughts?

[SkewedSpirit]

Also, my girlfriend found this:
"You can't use table salt because of the iodine in it, however you can use non-iodized table salt. you can get it at the same place you get your table salt and it will cost about the same.
The best way to do it is to drain a gal. of water each into two (2) containers. Add 1 cup of salt to one container and dissolve it completely. Net the fish and dip it into the salt solution for 5 min. or until it starts to roll onto its side, then put it into the freshwater container. let it stay there for 45 -60 min. and repeat the process twice more. After the third (3rd) time pour 3/4 of the salt solution out and mix the last 1/4 with fresh tank water. Net the fish out of the freshwater container and put it into the mixed solution, let it stay there over night. This should take care of it but if you need you can repeat the process the next night."

That sounds a bit weird to me, has anyone done or heard of doing something like this?

[HUKIT]

Is the third fish showing symtoms if so let's see some pictures of him.

[SkewedSpirit]

will see what I can do

[SkewedSpirit]

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?s...7&l=ab4981b699


Hopefully you all can access that link. That is the best pictures I could manage with my cell phone.

[HUKIT]

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