I think my fish has a mouth fungus

J

JennLy

AC Members
Mar 1, 2009
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Antelope Valley CA
We have had a 55 gallon set up with just plants and finally bought 6 platies to go in there this morning. I didn't notice it until we got home but one of them appears to have a fungus around it's mouth. I don't have a camera right now but I did a google image search and it looks the same as what the fish on this website has:
http://www.cosmos.com.sg/fungus.htm
So I am getting ready to go look for something to help it, my question is, will something I can buy from petsmart actually treat this?
I am sorry if this is a repeat question
 
Yep! You can buy basically any medication from a fish store that cures mouth fungus. Important thing to remeber is if you do have carbon in your filter you will have to remove it, as it takes out the medication. You replace the filter with a blue sponge. :)
 
When choosing a medication remember that "mouth fungus" is actually caused by columnaris bacteria, not fungi.
 
Make sure to check water so it is in optimal condition before med. Med itself is pollutant in time. Dosing in Q/t will be better option rather than dosing the main tank unless all the inhabitants are showing symptoms.
 
Thanks so much for the replies guys. The store had so many different medications, it was very confusing. They had regular medications and they had herbal ones, I wasn't sure about the herbal ones and after reading everything I finally ended up buying something called Fungus Clear by Jungle. It says it clears fungus and bacteria. The active ingredients are nitrofurazibem, furazolidone, and potassium dichromate. I took the carbon out of the filter and treated the whole tank. I figured I should treat all of them since according to the one article it is contagious and they all came from the same place.
More questions! How long should it take to clear up? I treated about five hours ago and the little guy doesn't look any better.
Is this a good medication? Like I said they had a lot, and I really didn't know what to get.
Since the medication shouldn't stay in the tank forever how long should I wait to do a water change?
 
Fungus is a pretty uncommon thing to get. I thought that my fish had fungus on their mouths and it quikly spread across their faces, I found out after the first fish died that it was columnaris.

I you do have columnaris which is more common than fungus, I would treat the whole tank because it is very contagious. Also if you have the option of returning/exchanging the fish I would since you mentioned they were already sick when you brought them home.

Also try and make sure you have as much oxygen in the water as possible, if you have an air stone in there to help create more surface movement that would be great along with lowering the water level.

The medication I used to treat the columnaris out break I had was coppersafe and I added salt too. Medications with copper sulfate have worked wonders for me getting rid of this.

If you could get pics of the fish it would be very helpful because columnaris can apear very similar to fungus only it kills much faster.
 
Sorry, these pictures aren't very good, I don't know if you can make out what is happening with them?
I thought about returning them, but I kind of felt bad about that since I assume will just let them die. At least I know not to buy fish there again.

fishmouth1.jpg fishmouth2.jpg
 
Read the instruction. It may take few days before any improments are shown. I would have chose the different med but no sense in mentioning it now. I would rather have you continue with what you have since what you used will work well on Columnaris, that is if it is columnaris.
Columnaris is a bacterial infection thus antibiotics will be better choice than CS but no arguments there since Brandon had good results using CS.
 
What kind would you recommend Cerianthus? Could I use a different kind if I did a water change?
The instructions don't really mention how long it should take, it does say I can do another dose in 48 hours if needed. So I guess they are saying in some cases in will clear up in that time?
I would guess the fish is going to die if it doesn't clear up by then, fooey. This is not how I was hoping to start fish keeping :(
 
Just my 2 cents- When my fish had an issue that sever (and only when I first started keeping fish and had no clue what to was did this happen...) I had to use 2 doses. So yea- theres my 2 cents.
 
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