fungus

[BIG J]

My axie over the weekend has developed a white mark on one of her gills, she is fine in her self and eating ok ,but I am just a little bit worried if this is fungus and if it is going to spread to the rest of her body. The white mark seems to be going up her gill ( it starts off in the middle) and around it the featheriness of the gill has gone, it doesn’t look like cotton wool and it is more or less exactly the same colour as her body.

has any one got any idea what this is , is she growing her gill to cope with more oxygen but if she was, wouldn’t she do the same to all of them

but if it is fungus how can I treat her please help

 

[Kaysie]

It sounds like natural coloration. If you could take a picture, that would be helpful.

 

[chrisluke]

Acid Burn?

Have you checked your PH levels? I have a constant battle to keep my PH level high enough and I know when it is slipping down because Chilli developes an acid burn (that is what my pet shop calls it) on one of his gills. It is almost like a bit of white skin which is wrapped around the gill, after a day or so it comes off and the gill underneath is usually missing its filaments but quickly goes back to normal. Other than that it doesn't seem to bother him and he eats and acts normally.

Christine

 

[Jennewt]

BigJ: I'm not sure what it is. If it's fungus it's likely to spread. Could it be an injury? You might want to prepare for salt baths, just in case, but I'm not convinced that it's fungus.

Christine: What do you use to bring the pH back up? Adding a bit of calcium carbonate to the tank should do the trick long-term. Any of the following are suitable: seashells, shell sand, calci-sand, limestone rock, bird grit (the 100% calcium carbonate variety).

 

[chrisluke]

I use tuffarock (I think that is what it is called) which I buy from the pet shop, it brings the PH up fairly quickly but I can never get it terribly high (usuall sits at about 6.8 - 7) but after a few months it will start to drop again and I have to take the rock out and rattle it with a hammer to expose some new bits.

Christine

 

[BIG J]

Hi guys thanks for the information last time, the white mark seemed to go away in just a couple days and she was fine.

But now we have another problem this time she has got the white mark back on the same gill in the same position, but the mark seems to be a little bit more like cotton wool so I think that it might be fungus and over the last, few days it has seemed to have gotten a little larger.

Would this go away in time and not give her problems anymore, or would i have to treat her.

I am a bit reluctant to do so as she has just been moved to her new tank in the last week, I used all of the water from her old tank to go into her new tank and all of the filter medium that was in the old filter, so I don't really think that the problem could be the water quality, the only thing that I think it could be is the stress of being moved from the old tank to the new one. Please give me some advice.