Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi there.

I currently have 5 goldfish swimming around in 500L FT. They have been in there for just over a month now.

I noticed a few white spots on one of them yesterday.

After some reading I found there is white spot disease, sometimes caused by stress and temperature fluctuations.

I'm not really sure however how to tackle this, or whether I need to actually do anything. Will the fish be okay if I don't do anything?

I'm getting more fish next week and think I need to setup a quarantine tank for either this fish or future fish that may get sick.

Do you have any recommendations for making this type of tank?

Thanks.

Salt is your friend in the battle here. Salt up your system to about 2 parts per thousand, that *should* be enough to take care of the white spot and not be too salty for your plants. As far as a quarantine tank goes, it is certainly a good idea to have one, especially if you decide to salt out the new fish with a higher salinity. It can also double as a hospital tank for the fish that may need it.

Where are the spots located?

As you've been researching you have probably come across it and ruled it out, but male goldfish when they are ready to breed will often get white spots on their gill covers and head, known as breeding tubercles, which can be confused with white spot/ich.



However if they are elsewhere on the body then ignore the above and salt as per suggested, 2-3ppt. And quarantining the new fish is a good idea.

From what I can see it's just one larger spot on the body.

If it's just one spot, it might be an isolated immune response to stress or excess slime production, not necessarily ich. If your fish are being subjected to water quality issues than that is likely what is happening, though you may not rule out parasites altogether without microscopy. Either way I'd suggest looking into things like tank size for the number of fish you have.

Either way, I'd be changing their water and testing it like crazy. But that's just me.

I thinks salt will work for you as suggested by Ronmaggi. I have the similar problems with 2 of my goldfish and salt solved the problem.