Clear growths on fish?

xxkenny90xx · Oct 10, 2020

This one is new to me. The fish has these clear growths and looks to be breathing heavy. Can anyone give me an ID?

xxkenny90xx · Oct 10, 2020

This is in my new pico tank so it'll be easy to catch the fish or treat the whole tank

Jay Hemdal · Oct 10, 2020

This look to me like late stage Cryptocaryon, ich. However, the fish is small, making the spots look larger, so it could be Amyloodinium, velvet. Copper would be the treatment in either case, but to be honest, with this many spots, it will be tough to treat in time!
Jay

xxkenny90xx · Oct 10, 2020

Jay Hemdal said:
This look to me like late stage Cryptocaryon, ich. However, the fish is small, making the spots look larger, so it could be Amyloodinium, velvet. Copper would be the treatment in either case, but to be honest, with this many spots, it will be tough to treat in time!
Jay

Lame! Well I do have some cupramine but I'm not sure I want to subject the fish to that. Do you recommend I just let it run its course or put the fish out of its misery? Or should I attempt to medicate?

xxkenny90xx · Oct 10, 2020

And yes it's a very small fish. Maybe 1" or a hair longer

Jay Hemdal · Oct 10, 2020

In my opinion, I do not think you can save it. But you might try a 5 minute FW dip, and if it survives that, you could start the Cupramine. Different people have different feelings on euthanasia, so I try not to push too hard one way or another...

Jay

xxkenny90xx · Oct 10, 2020

Ok I appreciate the help. Prepping the fw dip now

Jay Hemdal · Oct 10, 2020

xxkenny90xx said:
Ok I appreciate the help. Prepping the fw dip now

Do the dip in a dark container, and look for dead flukes falling off afterwards. A magnifying glass helps.

Jay

xxkenny90xx · Oct 10, 2020

Well I did the 5 min dip and now it's back in the tank. Maybe it looks a little better... Giving it some time to chill out before I do copper. I also found its only tankmate, the clown goby, was dead. And it had turned totally white. Weird..

Jay Hemdal · Oct 10, 2020

So nothing in the dip water that looked odd? Nothing like "fish scales" or little blobs of protoplasm? Not sure about the clown goby, except that this points more to a widespread protozoan infection, as I suspected at first. Are there any other fish left in the tank? They are at risk as well...

Jay

xxkenny90xx · Oct 10, 2020

Jay Hemdal said:
So nothing in the dip water that looked odd? Nothing like "fish scales" or little blobs of protoplasm? Not sure about the clown goby, except that this points more to a widespread protozoan infection, as I suspected at first. Are there any other fish left in the tank? They are at risk as well...

Jay

No, that's the only fish in there. I couldn't really see anything in the bucket. It didn't help that I scooped up a little bit of sand when I caught the fish so that was at the bottom of the bucket too

Jay Hemdal · Oct 10, 2020

xxkenny90xx said:
No, that's the only fish in there. I couldn't really see anything in the bucket. It didn't help that I scooped up a little bit of sand when I caught the fish so that was at the bottom of the bucket too

Yeah - "clean dips" are important, sand and stuff in the dip water make it difficult to see if there were flukes. My guess is that this was ich and you'll need to let the tank lay fallow for a period of time for it to die out. I've used to say 45 days for this in the past, but here, people tend to go with 76 days. I would say that setting up a quarantine tank and giveing all new fish a comprehensive procedure would help avoid this in the future.

Jay