please help ASAP; situation with betta fry

Hi guys, if possible could you please reply ASAP, I'm not sure how dangerous this is to my fry



Info

- 7 day old betta fry, 17 remaining (male started eating them)

- 27 deg celcius

- fed 4 times daily with live BBS from the local fish store ($1 a bag, kept refrigerated)

- after after each feed I've been siphoning the entire bottom of the
tank to remove excess food (about 15% water changed/siphon). In
addition, I also siphon up this fluffy stuff which predominantly seems
to 'grow' on the plastic parts of the heater (on the top, and the clips
for the suction cups).
- Though I suck this up after every feed, it is always back by the next
feed (about 4-6hrs), and is in the form of long strands extending off
the heater, and are fairly firmly attached to the heater itself (i.e.
hard to get off with the suction, I have to dislodge them with the tube
first).


This fluffy stuff is now appearing on some of the fry; I have isolated
5 fry that are affected and have two strands, ranging from very short
to about the same length as the fry's tail, and these seem to only grow
in the location where the ventral fins would be. These fry, and a
couple of others that don't yet have the fluff, aren't eating as well
as they were.


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Hi and welcome
Am just signing off, but in the mean time -

Do you have any water movement? air stone or filter etc
I would imagine the brineshrimp you are getting from the local shop isn't actually freshly hatched brineshrimp. Freshly hatched are tiny, way smaller than the fry.
At 7 days old your options are few. Try reducing the light on the tank. Maybe remove the heater and rubber mounts, give them a good scrub and pop them back in. the temp shouldn't drop whilst you do this.
I would say its more down to water movement though. Try getting an air stone in, but just have it bubbling gently.
Sounds like a type of fungus that grows in very still water. We sometimes see it when we tub hatch eggs.

Hi, thanks for the reply

With the brine shrimp, they are freshly hatched, and they are way smaller than the fry [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] The fry are able to eat them without any problems what so ever (they were eating them, some have just started loosing interest in food)

There is an open ended air line into the water going at about 2 bubbles/second.

I have also removed the heater and its components and completely scrubbed them, but the fish still seem to be affected.

From your experience, if it is this fungus is it dangerous to the fry? if so, mildly, moderately or severely?

Thanks ery much so far!

any time I have dealt with fungus on eggs or fry it was always fatel.

I took a sample of the 'fluff' from the tank and have just looked at it under the microscope- theres quite a few live protozoa of different sp. by the looks of it, and there are strands that I'm not sure whether they are fungal hyphae or not. I'm going to go and consult the universities fish specialist if ever I can find him and get him to have a look and stain it up.

New update; I used a syringe to gather a sample of the stuff on the heater, and some that was free-floating. Today I took it to uni and examined it under a microscope at medium power (no coverslip so couldn't go to high) and saw fungal hyphae and a number of types of protozoa. I then went and found one of my lecturers who specialises in fish and microbiology, and he had a look. He identified some of the protozoa species and said that they're usually present in water and that the concentration of them in the sample was actually pretty good (i.e. water quality is good). He also had a look at the fungi, but couldn't really come to any conclusions as to what the fish actually have, as he said it may be different to this substance growing in the tank.

He requested that I bring in any fry (in formalin) that I thought/think were/are going to die for him to examine, and if a diagnosis was made we could search through the literature to try and locate precisely what this substance is, and how to treat it (i.e. what doses for such young fish). The fish are still swimming around fine etc. so don't particularly want to end their chances now, so what I actually did was use two skewers to very carefully pin the 'fluff' trailing off some of the fry (some had so much it looked like it was starting to weigh them down)- it was incredibly sticky and stuck to the skewer, but I managed to remove the visible substance off the fry, and will take it in tomorrow for examination.

that has gone over my head but I hope you manage to sort out the problem x

Sorry if it didn't make sense Liz, is that because I didn't explain it very well?


Last night I did something you're not supposed to, and carefully caught all of the fry and then filled the tank, including heater and the floating silk plants, with very hot water and left it to sit for 10mins, to try and kill anything. I then scrubbed it all down.

I've also been seperating affected fish as I've seen them, and theres currently 6 seperate. The fish in the main tank still seem perfectly fine, eating well and no 'fluff'. No fluff has appeared back on the heater or anything yet.

Since I've removed the 'fluff' from the affected fry (or as much as I could) they've started to eat a bit better and are swimming around a bit more, so they may have a chance.

Regardless of what it is, I do not think its very pathogenic as the fry are still alive, and I noticed it a few days ago on the heater.

I am very impressed with your level of comitment to these guys. keep updateing us, Id love to hear how it goes and what the stringy stuff really is.

Thanks I really, REALLY want these guys to survive and not have to suffer. I'm normally very shy and won't approach lecturers to ask questions, but when it comes to my animals, I'll do watever it takes

I'll keep posting updates with how the fry go. The stringy stuff on the heater was identified as two types of fungi (Don't know where on earth they came from), its just the substance on the fry that is unknown- I'll hopefully find in a few hours

Will be great to hear updates. In the meantime just keep doing what you're doing and keep them nice and clean. If they still have this problem in a couple of weeks time they would probably be ok to have some low does meds.

We had some young fry with Velvet and treated them at about 2 months old and they were fine :D

Awesome, thanks :D I'm hoping that if it is a true pathogen I can try to simply control it until the fry are a bit older and are able to handle medications to eliminate the organisms.

Bit of an update for you, sorry for taking so long! Unfortunately had lots of uni assessment this week

I took the sample in from the fry, and we initially looked at it under the microscope unstained; it appeared to consist of a very dense cellular matrix, more like bacteria than fungi. My lecturer then stained it with methylene blue, and we saw that the cells were in fact large, long bacterial rods, many of which lined up end to end. He said that they looked a lot like bacteria from the Flexibacteria bacteria group.

Since I removed these growths from the fry, it hasn't returned- the fry are now 10 days, feeding better than ever (little pigs! lol) and are growing like mad. They all seem healthy, hopefully it stays that way.

I know flexibacter is a serious pathogen and seems to be much feared by the fish keeping community, however, Flexibacter is a disease of cold water, so it doesn't grow in warmer temperatures (Learnt this in my fish disease lectures, and from the lecturer directly when consultin him about these fry). Regardless, as I mentioned it hasn't come back (the bacteria or the fungus) but that doesn't necessarily mean the fry don't have subclinical infections. Fingers crossed they don't though