My Shiners Have Cotton Fungus

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The picture is not great. I already cleaned out the shiners I could that has the fungus before thinking about posting a picture. You can see the white area on the side of the shiners head. That is Cotton fungus. They are loosing their tail fins also.

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SureiLife's Fungus Aid has been added to the water. This stuff always works for me if I get a outbreak. I have the water warmer in the tank to reduce the temperature differential between my tank and the river water. I think that has helped the outbreak spread to other shiners.

Thanks for sharing about this. Hope you get it under control

Sounds like you’re on top of it.

"I have the water warmer in the tank to reduce the temperature differential between my tank and the river water. I think that has helped the outbreak spread to other shiners."

I agree, especially at 78-80°F water temperature in the tank. The Fungus Aid should work. I've also used salt (aquarium salt) as well - tablespoon per 3 gallons of water.

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Originally Posted by Tracker123

"I have the water warmer in the tank to reduce the temperature differential between my tank and the river water. I think that has helped the outbreak spread to other shiners."

I agree, especially at 78-80°F water temperature in the tank. The Fungus Aid should work. I've also used salt (aquarium salt) as well - tablespoon per 3 gallons of water.

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I have the chiller set to 66 degrees right now. Normally it will be down to 56 degrees but the water is too warm where I fish. I'm starting to think my local hatchery is buying shiners from another hatchery. I have been buying from our local hatchery for over 10 years but these last 2 loads of shiners have been less than stellar quality. No Cotton in 5 years, I am thinking I bought the shiners with the fungus except I would think I would have noticed it sooner. I dip my shiners first thing when getting ready to fish to give the bucket time to slowly warm up. Time will tell, I put some barley into the water as it was starting to cloud from waste not processed by the filter yet. I always run aquarium salt as it improves the slime coat dramatically.

BTW the Fungus-Aid cleared out all the infections in my tank. It works.

Good stuff. Glad you got it under control. Nothing worse than loosing a tank of bait

salt works and so does several other things , not sure is me , but it looks like we called ick back in the day ....
why not just use a teeny tiny tiny jig , they never get that there icky fungus stuff ,,,,,just saying :Rofl

I think Ick is bacterial, use a antibiotic to cure, not positive though. I cleared the fungus problem Fungus-Aid from Sure-Life products.

Found out I was not out of the woods yet with the shiners. Yesterday I put some shiners in the bucket the same way I normally do and within a few hours 1/2 was dead. This I have never had happen before so a radical approach was needed. I didn't photograph this first run but I pulled 1/2 the volume of water out of the tank 5 gallon bucket at a time. This partial water change will be done a couple more times so I will get pictures of the next time. Partial water changes really work, I have had the tank & filter system for so many years I may have a bug that didn't die when I dried the environmental filters in the sun after washing. The biggest thing to watch is your water temperature while doing the change out. I had to refill in batches watching the temp change on the Chiller. 2 full degrees of change I stop filling till the Chiller brought the temps back down.