White Spots On Pleco's Face

[Pshaw]

My fish recently got ick which was probably smuggled in by 2 newer fish I picked up at the pet store. I treated them for ick and that went away I continued treatment for a few more days to be safe and put in a filter cartridge with carbon to start getting out the medicine so I could return my snail to the tank when my pleco developed these spots. He's been panicking when I turn the light on in the morning, darting into things so I don't know if these just might be bruises from that (if so is their anything I can do about that?) but I thought it better to ask here and make sure it wasn't something serious before I just assumed he'd be alright.

Here are some pictures that I snapped. I know the second one is hard to see but you can still make out the size of the spots. My pleco is still small yet, only about 3 inches long just to help give an idea of the scale of the spots. Any help I could get would be wonderful.

 

[humpy_the_humphead_wrasse]

it doesnt look like white spot to me, itd be more defined and rounded if it was and thered be lots of them, my prediction if i may make one here is that you have a bacterial infection so id probably be taking the carbon out of the filter and adding some sort of bacterial medication to the tank? can anyone confirm this for me but thats what i would be doing anyway!

 

[WILDER]

Are the white patches fluffy in appearance, fish can flick with columnaris.
Any red edging to the patches.
If whitespot left untreated the spots can start to join up to form a patch.

 

[Pshaw]

Thanks for the tips, I think for now I'm just going to get the tank stable enough to put return my snail to then put the pleco in my sick tank and start antibiotics to see of that does the trick.

 

[Colin_T]

The big white patch under the eye and on the snout look like damage caused by running into something and should heal up by itself.
The little white dots look like whitespot and the fish also appears to be producing excess mucous, which can be another indication of whitespot or something else.
When treating for whitespot you need to keep the medication in the water for a week or so after the spots disappear. The whitespot parasite has 3 phases in its lifecycle.
1) the white spots on the fish
2) the spots fall off the fish and sit in the gravel where the parasite multiplies
3) the cysts in the gravel rupture open releasing thousands of new parasites into the water.
You can only kill the disease during this free swimming stage and medication must be continued even after the spots have fallen off the fish so it kills the parasites when they eventually hatch out and start looking for a new host.

As for the fish panicking when the lights are turned on in the morning, that can be caused by poor water quality, chemicals in the water, and shock from being in a dark tank that suddenly goes light.
Check the water and do some daily water changes and gravel cleans for a week. This will reduce any disease organisms left in the tank and dilute any residual chemicals.
In the morning you should open the curtains or turn the room lights on about 30 minutes before you turn the tank light on. This gives the fish a chance to wake up slowly and not get blinded by the tank lights coming on when everything else is really dark.
At night you should turn the room lights on, then turn the tank lights off. Leave the room lights on for about 15-30minutes before turning them off.

 

[Pshaw]

Thank you very much for the responses. I'll carry out treatment for bacterial infection to be on the safe side and if anything changes for the worse I'll come back here to find out my next step. Below are some better pictures I took of my pleco last night which might be helpful to the knowledgeable people here as far as IDing whatever this is.

 

[Colin_T]

I'm not sure I would use any medications at this stage, especially not anti-bacterial stuff. The fish actually looks a lot better in the new pics. Perhaps give it a couple of days and see how things go. Melafix could be used to prevent secondary bacterial and fungal infections. And if you do some water changes it might clear up without any need to medicate.

 

[calandra]

I have a plec, and he had exactly the same thing last september. He damaged his nose whilst hiding. I added Melafix, and in about 2 weeks it was totally gone. I'm with Colin T on this

Cal