| What parasite? |
Subject: What parasite? by PH12345 on 19/11/2020 11:00:07 Hi, I am sorry to be back here again. I posted here a month ago about my stressed goldfish with mystery pinholes appearing on it's fins. I got some advice and was hoping the condition would improve. But no one knew what was wrong with it. Since then I have changed the food and have been monitoring it closely. I have come to a conclusion, it is definitely some kind of parasite with 7-8 days long life cycle that is causing this. My fish gets very stressed every 7-8 days, dashing around, itchy, flickering it's fins and occasional bottom sitting. It looks stressed for about 2-3 days when the white spots/discolouration are appearing on it's fins. Once the white spots go away new pinholes appeare at the same places where the white spots were. Usually it gets 3-5 spots at the same time. Today it's fins are the worst ever, covered!! in white discolouration/spots and one of the spots (the largest one) has turned reddish colour, like it's bleeding. My fish has been bottom sitting the entire day and night when the spots started to appear, it does swim around when I feed it (for an hour or so looking for food from the bottom of the tank) and then goes back to bottom sitting. I can't see anything on it's body, the spots are only on it's fins. It looks very stressed and has stringy poop now. I fed some peas yesterday but it was still stringy this morning. It also had like a 5 second seisure today when it looked frozen and was shivering, including twitching mouth, it snapped out of it when I went closer, very strange! The problem has been going on for a very long time, over 6 months, maybe even a year and has got progessively worse. My other fish is fine and healthy. My tank is established and I am 99% sure it's not the water parameters that are causing this. I have done 30% water changes for the last 3 days, all parameters are the same as always. I have to treat the tank immediately, I don't want to lose my fish, I have had it for 6 years. I am thinking to treat for ich because my healthy fish had ich some time ago and might be immune to it now, would that explain why the parasite won't attack it? But the spots are not grain/salt like, they are more flat and are only on it's fins..They do look like spots though. The other option I am thinking is flukes?? Can it be flukes? I have no experience with flukes so I am not sure. Sometimes I have noticed something "dangling" where the spot is, something very small, less than 1mm, maybe it's just the broken skin, too small to see clearly. Anchor worms would be a lot bigger wouldn't they? I have noticed it twice now but only on the largest worst looking spot. I would appreciate any advice! I have attached some pictures I took this morning, it doesn't look as bad in pictures, it was really difficult to capture it. Thank you! |