white spot on discus

[sphed]

Hello,

I am new to discus and recently purchased a four inch snakeskin. I have him in a 55 gallon community tank. My ammonia is 0 nitrates 0 ph 6.5 , temp 84. My discus is eating fine and swimming around. The only problem is he keeps getting white spots on him and he is constantly rubbing up against things. I suspect ich, but the thing is I have an elephant nose in the tank so i cant treat with regular meds . Ive been dosing with aquari-sol and salt for the past three days. I have a quarantine tank but its only a ten gallon.

Is there any medications i can use to treat the ich but wont burn the skin off my elephant nose?

thanks

[sphed]

Heres a pic of him, you see the white stuff on him near the top of his fin, it kinda looks like a scratch with ick.

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/4237/discustg1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[the german]

i dont know about your elephant nose but you need to raise the temp to 88-90 and ad 2g/l salt that will get rid of ich.84 is to cold for discus.
you also need more than one discus 4-6 is a good number,otherwise they are not happy and you will get problems.

michael

[Bill T]

Well, if it was ich, wouldn't it look like grains of salt all over the fish?
I've thankfully and touch wood never had an outbreak of ich, but have had the occassional white spot develop - usually when I have been bit slack with water changes.
I have found myxacin useful in these circumstances.

Also, do you have a UV sterliser?

[sphed]

No i dont have a uv sterilizer. Ive been doing 10% water changes every other day. I dont think its ich anymore, more of it spread to his tail and now its starting to look like white patches. They look kinda fuzzy, heres a new pic. He looks like he has tiny clear bumps on his face too. What should i do? whatever he has seems to be spreading quick.

http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/3784/fuzzyqg6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[odaski]

fuzziness usually indicates fungal infection. however fungal infections are usually opportunistic and there is usually an unserlying cause.. ie non healing wound, skin parasites etc... pottasium permanganate works well for fungal infections but I would look for an underlying cause if this does not clear the lesions.

[Bill T]

I would get the UV steriliser asap.
Then treat with myxacin.

You can get a bacteria or fungus start up in the warm, wet & nutritious aquarium environment and it will thrive. The UV helps to reduce this. Myxacin will greatly reduce free floating bacteria. Next step would then be a fungal treatment - couldn't advise on this as i haven't had such problems since getting the UV.