White cottony fungus on Neons & BN

[Carlos & Siran]

We've just spotted a whitish fungusy stuff on our BN and a few Neons, on Basil it almost looks like he's swam through a cobweb( we're not entirely sure if it is just something he's swam through or not) but on the neons it's like a fluffy white mold. We guess it's cotton wool fungus, or mouth fungus as one has a bubble like fungus on it's mouth, but the other almost seems as if it's eating it's tail, but we can't seem to find what to cure it with.

We've tried searching but not found anything that we can pin down, same with Google. The few posts we did see mentioned euthanasia which has us worried.

We have Melafix, can we use that, will stress coat help?....Thanks

[Caryl]

I found this...

http://thegab.org/Illness-and-Treatment ... .html#Fuzz

Of course, we don't have medicated food here and eryhtromycin and tetracyclines are prescription drugs only but it might be a start for you to read.

[alanmin4304]

Columnarus can be cured with Furan 2 available from your pet shop. It is often called mouth fungus but is a bacteria and needs to be treated with a bacteriacide.

[Jennifer]

If there are hair-like white structures (like cobwebs) it may be saprolegnia (a ubiquitous tank mutlicellular organism). If not, it could be columnaris although you will usually see black or yellow lesions underneath the white fuzz in that case. It could be other things as well. Any chance of a photo or some more details?

In the mean time, do a water change, lower the temp below 24 and add some salt if you can. Short salt baths can help in either case (15 grams to 20 litres of tank water, gradually introduced over 2 minutes and remove the fish after a total of 5 minutes or sooner if it looks really stressed).

[BikBok]

question.. about my own fish with a similar problem.

I bought two guppys from a petshop, one died overnight and two days later noticed the other one had white fluffy stuff down one side, looked a bit bubbly too. I gave it a meth blue dip and then put it in the quarantine tank which happened to have some fry in it. The fry started trying to eat the fungus but he just kept swimming away ! a few hours later the fungus was gone and the guppy was dead! I feel terrible now.

What sort of growth would would make other fish try and eat it? fungus or columnuris?

anyway.. I've noticed another of the guppys is developing the same thing, and not sure how to treat it. I have put it in the quarantine tank. I'm sure the infection came from the new guppys as all the others have been fine until I introduced the new ones.

[Jennifer]

You can usually see the onset of columnaris as an area of the scales that is not shiny and coated with slime, it then progresses to a lesion and finally the white cottony growths. Considering the virulence (contagiousness) of infection in your fish I would guess that it is bacterial (possibly columnaris, but that is not a certainty without testing). You can try treating with antibiotics (e.g. oxytetracycline) but I have seen many of these cases resolve very successfully with daily water changes and salt.