Think Fish Keepers Daily News - 2022

I have given up trying to eradicate mine and do a skim of the surface every water change like you which keeps on top of it nicely.

I have been dealing with white spot recently after the addition of my angelfish and boosting my cardinal tetra population some of the more elderly fish in my tank got heavily infected - I’ve lost those three fish now and the tank seems fine so I did a sand clean and dosed the medication on more time in an effort to resolve the issue… fingers crossed.

Ahh yes I have raised the temperature too… is that what you are thinking of Sue?

I need to up the temperature in that case - my energy bill is going to be through the roof!!

Think I lost three fish through the white spot… though I’m a little outstanded at what’s happened. It seems to have been three fish who were badly infected. Old fish that were probably past their best before dates. Those fish have passed and there seems to have been absolutely no impact on many of the fish - a couple had a few small spots but they were only there a few days and now there is no sign of anything having ever been wrong with the tank…

How high and for how long? It needs to be 30 deg C for 2 weeks or 7 days after the last spot disappears, whichever is longer.

It actually needs to be 32, but only for a day. 30 will stop it reproducing but won’t kill it.

It is usually stated as 86 deg F so when I converted that it came to 30 deg C?

There are probably more myths online about whitespot than anything else. We all know about myths. When we gain more knowledge and learn that the myth isn’t true, nothing happens to the myth. It carries on regardless. It’s like the blind leading the blind.

There are 3 ways to kill whitespot.

1. Chemical treatments. These don’t work unless the stressor (the cause of the infection) is removed, hence the myth that chemical treatments on their own don’t always work, and  the myth (ime) that there are ‘resistant strains’.

2. Diatom filter. Filters out the free swimming tomonts so they don’t get back into the tank. This method is also a preventative.

3. Raising the temperature to 32C. When it gets to 32 the whitespot dies. The temperature needs to be raised and lowered gradually only for the sake of the fish.
At 30C whitespot stops reproducing. But when the temperature is dropped again, hey presto, reinfection, leading to the myth that you have to keep it at 30 for a long time.

If you use the heat method, it’s pointless using chemical treatments aswell. The chemical treatment doses are timed for key phases in the disease’s lifecycle at ‘normal temperatures’ (25C, I believe). If you raise the temperature you speed up the life cycle (at 32 the life cycle is twice as fast as it is at 22), so the chemical treatments will not work.

Whitespot really is nothing to worry about. It only becomes a ‘serious’ disease because of all the misinformation that stops people from treating it properly. I think of it as the fish equivalent of a cold. Rectify the problem as soon as it appears and chances are the fish will get rid of it by themselves.

If you see whitespot on your fish, your first question should be ‘why?’

That probably became 'common knowledge' when it was observed that cycles took longer at low pH. But when pH is low, other things tend to be low as well - GH and KH for example. For a long time, all people looked at was pH. It could be any other parameter, or lack of, which caused the slow cycle but low pH got the blame.
For example, I have read that the bacteria need inorganic carbonate and lack of that results in a slower cycle. That may also be a myth but it does show people are starting to look at other parameters.




[I use the word bacteria instead of micro-organism, just to make explaining things simpler for those who are new to the idea]

I split the thread so that all the 2022 posts are now in a new thread. And edited each post to change the title only - they all said "re: re: Think Fish Keepers Daily News - 2022" so I removed one or the "re:"s