cotton mouth disease

[Jaide]

My poor fighter has now contracted this - I used tonic and it seems to be working as the fluff around his mouth is now literally hanging on by a thread so is falling off?

I wonder if I should do more though and would be keen to hear other's experiences of this disease and how they treated it successfully.

[Stella]

Furan 2 or salt at 1 tsp per litre.

Not sure what tonic is, haven't used it myself.

Cottonmouth is also known as columnaris (can help with searching for info).

It is a NASTY disease. Personally I would move the actually sick fish into a hospital tank so it won't infect others. I would add the salt to the main tank just in case others may have the start of it.

Do some serious waterchanges on the tank. This is an opportunistic pathogen, lives in the water all the time and pounces when a fish is immunologically compromised. You need to figure out what caused it in the first place too.

Good luck, may be too late though

[lmsmith]

I agree with Stella. I'd be doing water changes every day, 1 dose of furan 2 to the main tank and 2 for the individual fish that is sick. He's a fighter, so if he's alone in the tank, take him out and treat him in a small tank, then do a thorough clean in the main tank, add salt and do 50% water changes every day. Keep him out of it for as long as you can, I think it takes 3 weeks for worst of the disease to get out of the tank system, but google the life cycle etc so you know exactly what you're treating. Stella's right, it's always there, so you'll never be able to get rid of it completely, but if you put him back into the tank that's teaming with it, he'll be likely to contract it again.

It can be pretty devastating, so get on to treating it early. Tonic won't fix it as it's a bacteria.