Fish scars or natural variations?

Thanks. I may try Tri-Sulfa, I noticed it is available at my Aquarium shop. But i will persist with the F-A until I use it up, I think I may have paused the dosage and allowed the fungus to get a foothold again, no-one has told me how long to treat for! I stopped for a couple of days after the visible signs went away, but obviously I need to keep going longer than that.
 
Now I am sure it's fungus I will talk again to the person who recomended it in teh first place. She should be able to tell me, it's the one question I didn't ask the first time. Public holiday today though, so I have to ring tomorrow.
 
Treatment is going to be a fairly long term commitment, the existing fungus should die and detatch quite rapidly, ussually within hours if direct topical application of the medication is performed before bath treatment. Reinfection of the wound sites is going to pose a problem while they're healing, as unfortunately fungus is generally present in every freshwater aquarium and introduction of new spores is near impossible to prevent. Check over the fishes usual home as best you can for signs of stress, agro fish, water qual issues, overstocking etc. As long there's environmental stress you can pretty much guarantee the wound sites will reinfect.

There's a load of treatment options for fungus and as someone preceding me mentioned Triple Suphur will work too, Malachite Green in combination with Acriflavine is my personal preference as it covers you pretty well for secondary infections.
With the size of those wounds, personally I would keep the fish under medicated bath treatment for one week. Followed by discontinuing treatment and maintaining a low salinity (NaCl) in the tank for a further week around the low end of what is used to treat ich should be adequate, 1tblsp/US Gallon, 1tblsp/4litres is close enough in metric speak (dissolved in water, slow addition over several hours). This is mainly so you can cease subjecting the fish to the rather toxic meds but still inhibit further fungal growth and irritate the fish enough for a little additional slime coating to aid in protection and healing.

Maintain pristine water conditions throughout this time, I would recommend a 25% daily water change daily replacing the medication/salt that is removed each change (50% medication free change when you switch to adding salt). While medicating, this will maintain a reasonable level of fresh medication in the tank at all times without the need to calculate redose concentrations based on chemical half-lives.

At the end of the treatment regime if fungus hasn't tried to invade the wound sites you can dilute out the salt over a few days and keep an eye on the fish. If all looks well you can reintroduce it back into its home and maintain observation.
 
Thanks, that's pretty close to my current plan. The water changes at the moment are 50% every 2 or 3 days (mainly because of time commitments) bu I'll change that to daily as I am able.

Water params are very good, ( with such frequent water changes you'd hope so) with Nitrates around 5ppm, Ammonia <0.1 and Nitrites at 0. The only reason I say ammonia is not 0 is that it's so hard to be precise with colour matching on those **** charts! :)

The fungus I photographed is about to fall off, and the other wound looks a bit better, though hard to tell. So it's about stopping that re-infection now.

I'm glad I didn't euthanise him, it's quite satisfying to be able to nurse a creature and see results.
 
DEAD.

Earlier today the last of the fungus fell off. But he wasn't looking happy, just moping about. He was that way all evening, but a few minutes ago I got up and noticed him seemingly up for air in the corner of the tank... 'cept he wasn't moving.

It seems he finally gave up the battle.

I have taken a good look at the other fish, and worringly the female Rainbowfish has a small bit of fuzz on her top lip. If it's fungus I'm REALLY pissed off with myself, looks liek I'll have to keep up the treatment just in case and hope it's just a bit she snagged from the gourami maybe, hopefully if it was being dealt with by teh Fungus-Ade it wont get a chance to take hold like it did with him. But this time i'm not stopping the treatment to find out.

I'll keep it up until I'm as sure as I can be.
 
Hey Gomisan, as I posted on AusFishForums, I'm real sorry to hear about your fish. You did your best mate, at least you gave it a decent chance, that's better than what most ornamental fish get.

With your remaining fish, seeing you still have the tank under treatment, I'm a little concerned about the formaldehyde in that solution, please make sure you've got plenty of aeration in the tank. I totally spaced and didn't think about it before (sorry) but formalin will chemically strip O2 from your water.
 
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