hey im looking after the school tank (only took over about 2 weeks ago)

i have brought home a pearl gourami with what looks like fungus i have never had to deal with this before i have him in a bare bottom tank with a few floating plants can any one give me some advice on what i should do to help him get better ??

Melafix should do the trick.

Is it fungus or mouth fungus? Mouth fungus is a bacteria and should be treated with a bacteriacide and fungus with a fungicide.

Hi

it is not mouth fungus.

so i would need to get a fungicide which is the best one out there??

fungus is usually an oportunistic infection of a wound which is bacterially infected so you probably want something to combat bacteria and fungi. See what your pet shop has.

There should be a muliti-cure product in your lfs. That will do the trick.

Frenchy

hi agin i have in in a tank with some "wunder tonic"

it says on the bottle

a general cure for finrot,tailrot,whitespot,and other fungal skin diseases.

i couldnt get in to a jansans or hollywood fish farm as i dont drive and this was about all the local had (its a pretty sad store in the way of fish supplys)

i thought that you were only ment to dose with 1 med at a time so should i wait till the fungus clears up and then treat the wound??

Whats in wunder tonic - just been for a look in my cupboards and don't have any, and is the fungus on a cut?

Wunder tonic

Active ingredients

1.5% methylene blue

0.1% malachite green

0.05% acriflavine

0.04% quinine

in an aqueous solution

and i think the fungus started on a graze??

Okay, what I find works best with methylene blue and should work with wunder tonic, if you can either entice the fish right up to the top of the tank or take it out the water briefly and put a drop of the med directly onto the wound and fungus (make sure it does not go into the gills). Put the fish back into the tank if you have taken it out and the fungus will literally peel off and float away in a short time. I normally can get my fish right up to the surface and drop it on that way. Make sure if you are using meds that you have no active charcoal in your filters as it neutralises everything.

Meth blue is the fungicide (used to be the cure for athletes foot---would be pretty obvious what you had wrong with your foot). Qinine used to be used for white spot and other external parasites and the other two have a bacteriocidal effect. You would need to watch the malachite on fish that are sensitive to it like killies, but overall a good combination.

What is in the medicine is fine.

i thought that you were only ment to dose with 1 med at a time

That is mainly because some different medicines{chemicals} can have a bad reaction.

Frenchy

Generally speaking one med at a time is the go. Sometimes you can get a synergistic reaction where the combination of two meds has a greater effect than the sum of the two ingredients individually. The antibiotic amoxyl is an example. The main thing is to know what you are treating and not throw a whole heap of meds at it and hope it does something (particularly with antibiotics). Combinations with meth blue, malachite and acriflavine are common for us old fellas. Quinine is effective and was an old cure for white spot but has been superceeded now by mepacrine and probably again now (was used to kill the malaria parasite)

sorry to say but he died yesterday afternoon

thank you to everyone that offered their advice .