New fish has ich?

[Shukura]

Hallo hallo.

I'm new to the fish keeping business, and to these forums (I'll go post in the hello section soon), and up til now I thought I'd been doing okay. I've been researching and everything.

Some tank history:

I got my first batch of fish about 15 weeks ago, after letting my 120L octagonal tank settle - 2 black moors, a calico short-tailed fantail, an orange fantail and what I effectionately call a blue moor. Too many for the tank size I think but I wasn't expecting them to live. I bought these mainly as a test to see how long they'd last before I went and spent lots of money on Orandas, which are the fish I really want.

For about a week everything was fine, but one of my black moors sat inside the barrel decoration and wouldn't come out, except for food and then he would only feed from the bottom of the tank. A week later, my other black moor was having difficulty swimming down, as was my fantail. I looked it up online and fed peas as a cure. But my black moor wouldn't eat them ): The fantail ate them however and the next day he was fine again. A couple of days later the black moor died and the other started having swimming problems, and he wouldn't eat the peas either. He died some time after. I think that was all caused by the dry flake food, and since then I've been soaking it prior to feeding and been alternating their food with peas and bloodworms and had no troubles. I've been doing 25-30% water changes and gravel siphoning weekly.

For the last ten or so weeks my three remaining fish have been happy and active and growing nicely. :3

Last friday (15thOct) I finally gave in to the urge and bought myself three 8 month old Orandas from a breeder. They were shipped down to Chch from Auckland and were a little sad looking for a bit when I added them to the tank (I didn't quarantine them as I have no spare tanks, for which I'm regretful), but seemed to perk up over the weekend and were soon swimming around with my other fish.

This morning however while I was watching them I noticed that one of my new baby orandas has some kind of growth on his head, towards the back of his wen that wasn't there yesterday. It's white and looks kind of fluffy like a fungus. It's really tiny, but then so is the fish (4-6cm ish). He also has a small tear in his tail fin and on his pectoral fin, but no more spots on him anywhere . Is this ich? I really don't want to have to add any chemicals to the tank if I can get away with it, but if it'll save my little fish I'll do it D:<

If this is ich, what's the best product for curing it? And how long do I have before it kills my fish? D:

Also should I change the water or anything? I last changed it on thursday before my fish arrived.

I took some photos but have lost my camera cable (go figure). I'll try find it asap.

[pink_fish]

Hi Shukura and welcome to the forums. It would be really good if you could give us a bit more information:

Could you put up a photo of the afflicted fish? It would be helpful – then we could have a go at diagnosing the problem, which doesn't actually sound like ich to me – but a photo of your fish and tank would help.

Did you 'cycle' your tank – i.e., allow time for waste-eating bacteria to grow in your tank and filter to handle the waste that your fish would make?

You almost definitely have too many fish in your tank – a single goldfish around 5 cm long requires roughly one foot of aquarium surface area – this is far more important than many litres of water your tank will hold. While there are a lot of reasons why your fish might have died, overcrowding leads to stress and a stressed fish is susceptible to many illnesses.

EDIT: I should have said first of all good on you for doing research and the water changes – sounds like you are aiming to make a good start!

[Caryl]

Hi and welcome.

Also, what sort of filtration do you have? Goldfish are very messy and, along with surface area, need a lot of filtration.

Ich, or whitespot as it is commonly known, looks like the fish has been sprinkled with salt.

Have you done any water tests? Do you know the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels?