Male Swordtail's sword furry

[New Boy]

Wilder,

I was quite interested to read this as I've recently got two orange chromides that I think may have this. One of them had a small white patch on his tail that I noticed the day after I got him that has steadily grown to cover the whole tail and the other develped a series of small white dots all other it's body (and a few scales looking worse for wear) and began shimmying. It looked like white spot to me so I turned the lights off, did a 50% water change, raised temp to 80 F and added a six day course of white spot treatment which cleared all up except the white bit on the tail of the first fish. About a week later it started to come back on the other fish so I've done another water change, lights off, temp up, add white spot treatment and most of it seems to have cleared - but could this be what they've got?

The white bit on the tail doesn't seem to stick out very far but it doesn't look cotton wool like - it's more like a very cloudy tail fin.....neither fish seems in distress [touch wood] and are eating and swimming around fine...all water tests ok - nitrate 35 (about same as tap water) and nitrite and ammonia undetectable by tetratest.....would you recommend isolation and treatment with 'internal bacteria' and fungus fin rot' by interpet simultaneously or one after another if this is it - I wasn't sure from your earlier post...

Thanks for any advice that you can give.

Andy

ps I know that orange chromides are brackish fish, they were bred in freshwater and I'll be acclimatizing them to brackish once I've sorted this problem

 

[WILDER]

When fish get parasites they also can get bacteria infections on top, sounds like with the flicking you had a parasite with a bacteria infection on top,the scales looked worse for wear what do you mean as if fish rub scales can fall off, the whitespots on the body did it look like grains of salt, and are they still there, the one with the white patch on the tail need a treatment of anti internal bacteria med best to issolate if you can.

 

[New Boy]

Thanks Wilder,

Is it worth me giving them both a salt dip to deal quickly with the bacterial infection and then treat them for anti-internal bacteria? If so can you recommend a good anti-internal bacteria treatment?

Thanks for your advice
Andy

 

[WILDER]

Yes you can give salt bath on parasite infestations but you really need a med two, you can mix meds but it's not advisable as mixing two meds could cause the tank to go into a mini cycle, you could add a parasite med then just half dose the bacteria med, interpet do a anti internal bacteria med, make sure the fish are not scaless if you are giving a salt bath, depends on the desease parasites maybe three aday usually for thirty minutes, but you start of gradually say like ten minutes if they can tolerate it that long, if the fish acts weird and starts rolling over remove the fish from the dip, a salt baths is usually one tablespoon to the gallon, good luck.