White Spot Treatment Problems

[CheekyCheeze]

Hey Guys.

I have read the pinned White Spot Treatment Topic and It is the end of the treatment and the fish still appear to have white spot.


I have plenty of aeration and the tank is at a temperature of 28 C(81 F)
I have 7 angelfish, 9 black neon tetras, 1 Bristle nose Catfish, 1 Upside Down catfish, 1 Clown Loach(which will be given away as soon as the white spot problem is taken care of)

The Black Neons, Upside down catfish(Whom is now totally inactive ) and Bristle nose Catfish all have white spot on them, all the other fish appear to be unaffected.

The dosage Rates are as follows: 5ml per 20L of water. Then it says under that 'For tetra species, baby fish and scaleless fish(loaches etc), use at a reduced rate of 5ml per 40L of Aquarium water.

I used the 5ml per 40L because I have Black Neon Tetras and a clown loach.

Then it says to repeat the treatment after 3 days. then in bold 'DO NOT OVERDOSE'

The Active Constituents are '37mg/mL FORMALDEHYDE and 0.32mg/mL MALACHITE GREEN'

I have Followed all the instructions. Put in the first dosage, three days later put in the 2nd dosage and now it is three days after and still no visible improvement(fish still have spots in them...

What should I do?

Possible options I see are, do another 5ml/40L dosage, change tank water and do the 5ml/20L treatment or buy a new White spot treatment.

Can anyone give me some advice - No fish fatalities yet, I hope I can keep it that way...

Thank you!

[Edit: Added a picture, neons are really hard to take pictures of with a crummy camera]

If you look closeley at the fins of the bottom right fish you can see white splotches, it is more clearer when it is zoomed out. The spots are on the body as well

 

[Colin_T]

Make sure you don't have any carbon in the filter because that will absorb the medication.
Malachite green is fine for treating whitespot so just keep the treatment up every 3 days for a couple of weeks

 

[CheekyCheeze]

Thanks for the tip Colin.

I put in another half dosage and turned the temperature to 30 Degrees.

One of my neons has suffered casualty. BUT, They seem to be going better. and My upside down catfish is now at the other side of the tank, so that is a good sign

Anyway thanks Colin!

P.S. I already took out the carbon filter

 

[dusky]

Hope you manage to sort it. It's a pain when you have things like clowns in and not being able to do full doses. I got rid of whitespot by upping the temp and salt and luckily not had a prob again. But i'm not sure about using salt with the clowns, my whitespot was on silver sharks. No doubt someone will tell you if you can or can't. good luck

 

[Colin_T]

loaches can tolerate salt but not too much. It's preferable not to salt them up

 

[CheekyCheeze]

I reckon I will skip the salt. I have raised the temperature to 30 degrees.

White spot is so annoying! It appears to be going away, but looks can be decieving

Thanks for all the good luck

 

[Colin_T]

whitespot has several stages to its lifecycle.
1) is the white spots on the fish
2) the spots fall off the fish and sit in the gravel multiplying
3) the whitespot cysts rupture open and hundreds of new parasites get released into the water to re-infect the fish.

you can only kill the parasite when it is in the free swimming stage (3). Any parasites that don't get killed during this stage will go on to infect the fish before dropping off into the gravel and producing more of the beasties.
Higher temperatures will help to speed up the lifecycle.
Salt helps to relax the fish and encourages the production of excess mucous on the fish, but does nothing to the actual parasite.