# Goldfish with white fuzzy growth?



## Castro235 (Mar 4, 2010)

Hi everyone, I'm having trouble finding what this is on my goldfish, it is a comet goldfish, about 3.5 inches long, and this has developed within the last 24 hours, probably much less than that.

It looks like a white fuzzy growth, about four times the size of the little red betta pellets(I'm bad with very small measurements, so that seems like the best i can do for a size comparison that most people might know) It almost looks like part of it fell off within the last few minutes(Which makes me more nervous because I thought it might possibly be an ich cyst)

The tank has been set up for almost a year, it housed 6 goldfish(I know, way too small for six goldfish, but they were purchased before I knew, and I plan on building a pond before they are 8" long and hopefully that should be good enough to hold them over) 

Within the last week one goldfish died, my largest at about 5 inches, she was suddenly on the bottom barely moving, so I did about a 40% water change and although she became slightly more active she died two days later. All the other goldfish seemed healthy. The tank is also home to a chinese hillstream loach who has also been doing good for probably 6-9 months, and unfortunately due to a recent event, the tank is now home to my rosy red minnows(16 of them, 15 under 2 inches, and one massive at almost 3")

The tank has been set up with a 10 gallon sump tank the entire time, until the minnows came and now it is set up with a 40 gallon sump tank with about 15 gallons of water in it. There are many plants, tons of lava rock, a few fake plants, and it has a sand substrate. There is also a large piece of driftwood in the sump tank, it was in the minnow tank previously, so nothing is new to the tank other than the minnows and their driftwood, and one of their decorations(A balsa wood plane put together with aquarium silicone, also from the minnow tank with no issues for many months)


The fish itself is not acting strange, no clamped fins, no sluggish movement, just what appears to be a small growth on their side.

I have some pictures of it, although they are poor quality.

Thanks for any help, I really appreciate it.


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## heavenly680 (Jun 23, 2011)

I m seeing that that is a disease called "ick" commonly attracted to fish......my goldfish once had it and i just used the basic fungal treatment you can find at your local pet store. Hope this helps!


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## genewitch (Jun 27, 2011)

it's Ich. There's several ways to treat it, most require a separate tank. you're probably going to have to treat your main tank anyhow (ich is REALLY contagious and you have to nail it fast.)

You can try a salt bath, or a copper dip. copper MUST be done in a separate tank that you won't use for anything else. Salt can be done in a regular dinner bowl. Ich generally comes from adding new fish without quarantining them first (from what i understand.)

I got rid of a bad ich infection by salting my main tank (1 TBSP per 10G) and bringing the temp up to 81-82F, but you have to make sure that these won't hurt any fish in your tank (it will kill shrimp, for instance, and corydoras get annoyed at salt) This isn't making the water brackish, but does help slow down the spread of ich and seems to have worked for me. I wasn't willing to remove my filter media for a week to use medicine.


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