Help please: fungus on loach

[Sani78]

Hello everyone, my first post and I'd like to get some advice and help please. Recently all the loaches in our 270 gallon aquarium develop what we think is fungus infection. They don't look like white spots or ick, just some whitish mark on their tails. No marks on the body.

We've separated them into a smaller 'hospital tank' of 20-30 gallon. Water quality is good, ammonia and nitrate reading is good (0 and 20ppm)

I've been reading quite a bit on treatment and got confused on whether it is a good idea to increase the temparature of the hospital tank using a heater. I've read some forum which says higher temparature at around 82-84F is recommended because it expedite the life cycle of the fungus and presumably makes it die faster.

But I also ready other forum saying that fungus unlike ick thrives and grows faster in warm temperature, so don't increase the temperature. Apparently warm temperature of water only works for ick and white spots not for fungus.

I'll try to get a picture of the loach later, at the moment, they are all hiding and I don't want to stress them further.

Thanks in advance for your advice on the water temperature.

 

[predatorkeeper87]

Hello everyone, my first post and I'd like to get some advice and help please. Recently all the loaches in our 270 gallon aquarium develop what we think is fungus infection. They don't look like white spots or ick, just some whitish mark on their tails. No marks on the body.

We've separated them into a smaller 'hospital tank' of 20-30 gallon. Water quality is good, ammonia and nitrate reading is good (0 and 20ppm)

I've been reading quite a bit on treatment and got confused on whether it is a good idea to increase the temparature of the hospital tank using a heater. I've read some forum which says higher temparature at around 82-84F is recommended because it expedite the life cycle of the fungus and presumably makes it die faster.

But I also ready other forum saying that fungus unlike ick thrives and grows faster in warm temperature, so don't increase the temperature. Apparently warm temperature of water only works for ick and white spots not for fungus.

I'll try to get a picture of the loach later, at the moment, they are all hiding and I don't want to stress them further.

Thanks in advance for your advice on the water temperature.

pictures of the infection are needed, water parameters are needed.

My only suggestion right now before you get us the info we need is get some methylene blue and do a dip bath for your loaches.

fungus, like bacteria, can thrive at different temperatures. some are heat tolerate, some are cold tolerate. As a general rule of thumb I'd say for a tropical species like loaches, raising the temp is a gamble with fungus.

EDIT I missed your param list in the OP, sorry.
Charney

 

[Pomatomus]

Definitely need a pic for diagnosis. There are VERY few tropical fish diseases that are actually caused by fungi. Many of the diseases that are referred to as fungus are often caused by bacteria or other pathogens (e.g columnaris, epitheliocystis, etc...). It's true that water molds like saprolegnia thrive in lower temps but I doubt you have saprolegnia.

It may be fungus but we can't be sure yet.

 

[Sani78]

Sorry guys did not get back earlier. We lost 1 loach who was swimming erratically anyway (probably swimming bladder). The other 3 seems fine. The big one has a white mark on the front of its head (can be seen in the picture), but I don't think that's more a scratch than white spot. Will keep on monitoring.

By the way, on a slightly different note. How much and how often do you guys feed loach. I mainly use Tertra bits. I've read that to prevent over feeding, you're supposed to only feed fish to the extent that they finish eating in x seconds/minutes. X usually being 0.5 up to 3 minutes. This is to prevent left over food from decaying and raising the ammonia level. But with loach, I find this advice difficult to follow. They are often hiding and only come out later (usually when we switch off all the lights). So there will always be left over food till the morning. How do you guys handle this without over feeding? Thanks all for your help

 

[predatorkeeper87]

from that pic it looks like a scrape if anything.

Get Paraguard, its easy on fish, I've used it with loaches with success. It will cover any possible fungal/some bacterial issues if that's what this is.

I feed my loaches tilapia, and shrimp pellets every day. They also rasp the glass in their aquarium for the algae...ddidnt know it was a loach behavior until I watched them do it, little loach mouth marks all over the glass.

 

[Sani78]

This is the picture of my aquarium. Basically it's 270 gallon, but we had to put a horizontal divider between the Arowana and the loach (we saw the arowana ate a medium sized loach in front of our eyes and it wasn't pleasant).

So the arowana is now in the top half on his own and the 5 loaches are at the bottom half along with 2 dragon fish and 2 black ghost.

The divider has green mesh netting that allows food dropped to go through (big enough holes for food but too small for the loach to go up).

Only problem is that it is difficult to control the amount of food that actually gets to the bottom so it's normal to have excess food that I guess creates all the problems with bacteria and perhaps even ammonia spike. Any suggestions welcomed. Thank you

 

[duanes]

There are bacterial infections in fish, that present visually just like fungus, but aren't fungal. And some of these become worse by raising the temp (columnaris for one that has tuft like growths).
To help diagnose your fish, a more clear, more detailed, and closer shot of the infection is needed to see it.
The shot below shows the kind of detail needed to diagnose with any degree of accuracy, I realize it is ick, and not a fungal/bacterial infection, but I put it here as a eg of the detail required.