Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

What nasty disease do my fish have? Their tails are missing and have the fully whitish/clear film around the "wound". I would assume that these 2 are goners but want to make sure my others don't get it. Any suggestions



Stats:
-150 gallon tank with about 35 small goldies...2 I've seen with this. The others seem OK, but are too fast to catch and examine
-During the day the temp goes from from 50 to 70 degrees

At the first sight of trouble, Salt.
I don't know the disease, but thinking it's finrot.
Act as soon as you get a definitive answer, but salt now.
I've seen this years ago on aquarium fish of mine, and they start dropping like flies.

as a correction on my post "fully whitish" should be "Fluffy whitish"

How much salt do you think I should use. Usually in my aquarium I usually treat things like cotton mouth with Melafix...but that's a lot of melafix for 150 gallons!

increase salt levels 3ppm,
to a total solution of no more than 8ppm or plants will suffer.
if salt is 0 you can go to 6ppm and reduce later to 3ppm.
use sea salt. Pool salt is ok provided it's clean.

Most aquarium medications are definitely not meant for food systems so do some careful checking there before trying anything like that.

My immediate thought was fin rot but I don't know if that fluffy white stuff is normally associated with such things or is another disease.

In any case, Salt is the normal AP treatment. 3 ppt of salt (I use solar pool salt or solar water softener salt, just make sure to dissolve it in a bucket of system water before pouring it into the system since undissolved salt on the bottom of the fish tank can burn a fish that rests on it.) Anyway, 3 ppt of salt is a good starting point for the main system, very few plants will be affected by that level of salt and it should benefit the fish in there. As for your two quarantined fish, you could do much higher levels of salt for short baths for them or even higher for quick dips and then keep them in quarantine with air and you could have their quarantine tank at at least 6 ppt if not higher. I'm not sure how high is safe for goldfish though. You might do a little research on goldfish and see what kind of salt levels are good for them and how high you can safely go for baths or dips. (never leave a fish unattended in a salt bath and remove it from the salt bath if it starts floating funny on it's side or upside down.)

Good Luck.

Goldfish are robust little thing, I'd try a 6ppm temporary bath for the very sick and go 3ppm increase in normal tanks.
Then MAINTAIN 1-3 ppm at all times in your tanks, this will aid the plants as sea salt has good trace elements and also keep the fish happy, they don't like soft water.

I think Kuda means ppt when talking about salt.

I would actually go much higher on the salt bath. Like 10 ppt. When adding new fish into my system, I run at 3 ppt. I normally try to keep my salt levels between 1 and 2 ppt in the main system. I know people out there who will treat certain diseases with 6 ppt salt in their main system but that will do in some plants.

yes ppt... bit tired today...

Try looking up "flexi bacter" - looks very similar to that.