White Jiggle Specs On Aquarium Wals

[Ckutz_fistTimer]

Hi,

My tank is still in it's cycling process, my gourami has ick pretty bad despite raised temp, salt, and quick cure. Botia Kubotai thrash on occasion, like a few short little spasms against the rocks always on on side of them. I had seen a spot or two of ick on them but it seemed to clear up for the most part, is this just residual ick?

Now on glass of my tank there is little clear specs, that move with the water a little bit. they occured in a previous tank also and eventually went away, I cant remember if there was any loss of fish at the time or not though. could these be related to the ick? or is it bacteria from cycling? just trying to figure out if this stuff is harmful or not.

here's a picture:

if you can't see it clearly, it's like a little white spot, with a clear cloud around it. it's "colony" stops at the line the water went down to during water change. it's also growing on plants i think, and on my thermometer
there's thousands of um.

 

[Sofia]

looks like some form of algae or just residue from the tank, is your tank adequately filtered?

 

[Colin_T]

The things on the glass could be hydra, planaria or cyclops.

whitespot needs treating for a week or more after the spots have gone from the fish. This is because the whitespot parasite falls off the fish and sits in the gravel for a few days where it multiplies. then it hatches out and spreads over thew fish again.

Botias don't like medications so your could be suffering from skin irritation caused by the medication and salt.

If the tank is still cycling then there will probably be an ammonia and nitrite reading which will also cause the fish to be irritated and scratch.

 

[Ckutz_fistTimer]

Colin_T,

Yea i realize now that these conditions are especially rough on the loaches. Do you think they'd be ok in my 5 gal tank while i medicate the gourami..i'm thinking that i should keep the gourami in the tank he's in and medicate that tank incase there's already ick everywhere else in the tank. i set up this 5 gal when i set up the 10 gal, it's not cycled either..but at least there will be less irritations. Do you think they'd be ok in a 5 gal for a week?

I'll try and look up more about those parasites or w/e they are that you mentioned, but so far it doesn't really look like any of them. it is incredibly small like 1mm-2mm and doesn't look like any kind of critter, but i can't find a form of algae that it resembles.

And the tank should have adequate filtration, the filter was marketed for a 10-20 gal tank

Thanks for your help!

 

[Colin_T]

I would just leave them where they are and treat the tank they are in. If you move the fish to another tank you will move the whitespot parasite along with them and have to treat two tanks instead of one.

If you have an ammonia reading then perhaps do a massive (90%) water change and then treat the tank. The big water change will dilute the ammonia levels and that will reduce the stress to the fish. Then don't feed the fish for the next week or so, or only feed them a tiny amount every couple of days. This will minimise the amount of ammonia produced and keep the water cleaner for longer.

Make sure any new water going into the tank is free of chlorine and has a similar temperature & PH to the tank.

 

[CKutz]

I'm really wondering if this isn't the ich parasite? maybe that's not possible because they live in the substrate..but on this site:http/www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/health/ich.shtml
says, "The gelatinous thin-walled cyst can't survive being completely dried out, an incentive to let your nets dry out completely, if there is Ich anywhere among your tanks.". And everytime i did a water change the stuff cleared up to the level the water was dropped to.

just a thought incase anyone else sees this stuff..
however the other day there was like a white inch worm type thing on the glass extremely skinny, and i cut it in half with a knife, and the two sides continued squirming around. at that point i used an algae scrubber thing and cleaned off all the glass as best i could. I think i read about one of the previously mentioned parasites surviving being cut in half.