Fungus prevention

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xytrix01

Aquaria Intern (NOOB)
Sep 26, 2004
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San Jose, CA
I brought home "a dozen" (18 this time! :D ) feeder goldfish for my catfish and put them in his tank. I carefuly inspected all of them first, and they all looked fine. I put them in there to swim around with Felix until he got hungry. Right away one of the little silver ones got stuck in one of the plastic plants. I freed him, and a few hours later he did it again. I got him loose again, and he sorta swam a little funny. The next morning I couldn't find him or about 12 others, so I assumed Felix ate him. That was yesterday.

Today I lifted up one of my rocks to re-pot a plant that felix had knocked loose, and the little guy was underneath. His tail was all shreaded from him being stuck, and he was coated in a white cotton-like fuzz. I netted him out and put him in a seperate tank all by himself. I thought I had ICH, but I didn't have time to look it up, So I upped the temp to 87 and left for school. When I came home, the feeder was dead, and the water had all this little white stuff floating in it.

None of the other feeders have any signs of it, nor does the catfish. The snail dosn't like the higher temp and is sitting at the top of the tank sticking out of the water about 2cm. I'm about to go do a nice big water change, but can someone tell me what I should do about preventing any of the other fishes from getting it? Should I keep the temp up and add salt? If I do should I remove the black mystery snail and treat seperate, or will she care? Or is there a comercial product that I should dose the tank with?
Please let me know!

Edit:
The snail is headed back down into the water. I guess she got hungry...
 
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Don't put feeders in your 'show' tank. Keep them in a seperate tank. Try to get rosie reds or guppies and not goldfish. They are more 'nutritouse' for you fish. Keep feeders in a seperate tank. If it is just fungus, a little salt should help. I've seen some fungus literally fall off of an eel just after adding salt. I'm not sure about catfish but I know all other fish, if they have the opportunity to eat that many feeders at one time, they will regardless of hunger level. Don't keep feeders with you regular fish. It is possible that the feeder got stuck while trying to fee from the catfish. Feeders are more common to contain diseases and bacteria because they're not kept very well at the stores. So, to beat the dead horse, Keep feeders out of your show tank, and out of any tank that you actually care about the inhabitants. I usually keep mine in a seperate tank for at least a week before I even feed them to my fish. Thats if I'm forced to buy feeders from the store. Even then, it's a very carefully selected store.
 
Yeah, I've certanly learned my lesson on this one. No more store bought for me. I'll go buy some salt in the morning. How long should I keep the salt levels up? None of the fish show signs of the fungus, but I want to make sure that they don't start to.
I'm planning on keeping mollies. If I just raise some of the fry, can I feed those once they grow large enough?

also, anyone know If theres anything else I should be feeding my brown bullhead? I tried the vegi-disk things, but he wants no part of them. any ideas anyone?
 
If you plan to raise mollie fry that should be ok for feeding as long as you keep a good job of cleaning the tank. I've been raising my own feeders for a while now, be sure you have a back up plan if they don't grow fast enough for you, if they all just decide to die on you, or if hit a dry period where you have no fry to feed. Does your catfish eat flakes? I was under the impression that all catfish were scavengers. (not to say that they are "only" scavengers) My cats don't do the wafers either but they really like flakes. Just try to find something that is high in protien. Oh and if you didn't already know, if your fish does regularly eat non-live food, I would suggest keeping feeders to a minimum. Or at least don't make it the staple diet for the fish. I've found out that it's different with every fish (what to feed). It's almost a trial and error issue with most of my fish. Some will eat this kind while a different but same kind of fish won't. If your bullhead will come to the top try freeze dried blood worms.
 
He may or may not. IDK I've always fed him live foods, becaust thats all he would eat. I shudder to think how many flakes he would consume, considering he's about 7" and eats goldfish by the halfdozen.
 
Does anybody know if the salt treatment of 2tsp per gallon is going to affect my snail? I'm just going off the old salt on the slug story here.
 
If the snail comes in direct contact with the salt grain yeah, it will most likely kill him. I had some snails in my guppy growout tank to help clean up, I put some salt in there for the guppies, all the snails who actually touched the salt grains melted, any that didn't were fine.
 
Ok, here's what I have done. The snail has moved over to my 10gal that I have set up holding 2 goldfish. I changed 20% of the water in the 45 today and replaced it with a salt mix of 2tsp/gal. I plan to continue these water changes for the next 5 days or so until I have the salt level at 2tsp/gal throughout. My question is how do I tell when the salt has reached the levels that I want? It's not like I'm taking out a diferent chunk of 20% every time. I'll loose some salt with the change, but replace it with a much stronger solution. My thinking is that I'll replace 10 gallons per day for 5 days, and that should obtain me the salt levels I need right?
 
Anybody? am I doing this salt thing right? :confused:
 
Alright, day two of the water change series. I changed out another 13 gallons today, so it brings me up to 26 gallons of saltwater, and 19 freshwater. I was just going to do this fo two more days, mabey 10gal apiece so that I have changed out 45 gallons worth of water. Somebody stop me if I'm doing this wrong...
 
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