Black Spot-To treat or not to treat

J

jamie1972

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Aug 21, 2006
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I need input...Bought a dwarf gourami one week ago at Wal Mart (I know, I know)....their fish shipment had just come in...so I thought I would buy him quick and get him in a healthy environment fast. He is in a 5g with a bronze cory cat, ADF, and three ghost shrimp. Water params are fine, 75-80 degrees constant.

Now....he has tiny black specks all over. I have narrowed it down to Black Spot. There are conflicting recommendations on the net as to whether to treat it or not...since most say that it needs snails and/or birds to continue it's life cycle.

Have any of you had experience with this? If so....what do you recommend?

Please respond, thanks.
 
Correct me if I am wrong but...
I highly doubt it is black spot, as the black spot im familiar with is found in marine tanks only...

It could just be a colouring?
 
Correct me if I am wrong
Click to expand...
ok, you're wrong. though not a very common disease in freshwater tanks, diplopstomiasis or 'black spot disease' does occur. many kinds of fishes may be found to have tiny black spots the size of a pinhead up to 1 mm in diameter on various parts of their body, such as in their skin on the head and body, inside their mouth, on their gill arches, and on their fins. The black spots are caused by the adult cercaria life stage of parasitic flukes, which are digenetic trematode worms, occurring when the mature female penetrates the skin of the host fish and lays or secretes thin flexible egg sacs called cysts.

the life cycle of this parasite is generally far too complicated to occur in the common aquarium situation. two intermediate hosts are required -- fish eating birds, the definitive host, usually carry the mature flukes in their intestines and drop the eggs into ponds as part of their feces. these eggs hatch into free swimming larvae which infest snails -- the intermediate host, and develop into additional larval forms. these larve then infect fish.

the most likely scenario is that these markings are part of your fish's normal coloration.

in any event, if your fish do turn out to have "black spot", this disease is non-invasive and usually clears up on its own since without the required intermediate hosts, the life cycle cannot be completed.

should you decide to treat .. the medication of choice is Kordon's Trifon, containing trichlorfon.
 
Unless you have birds and snails I wouldn't worry about it. The life-cycle can't continue. However, I'm with jwddboy in that it is most likely not black spot. Can you post pictures? Is it spreading? I have heard of fish that unexplainably turn black for no apparent reason and then pass on.
 
ooo. New to me. Always good to learn new stuff.
But its the same parasite...
I'd suggest leaving it.
It will clear itself up as it does in marine tanks.
:)
 
Bunny13 said:
I have heard of fish that unexplainably turn black for no apparent reason and then pass on.
Click to expand...

I found that some of my baby gourami's had turned half black a long time in the past (darker coloured), and it seems to have been a protien deficiecy. It cleared itself up after feeding with protien flakes. Seemed an odd thing to happen but... The protien seemed to do the trick.

However the description does not sound like this.
 
Well...it's TINY black specks. Not splotches. It is as if someone had taken a stick-pin, dipped it in ink, and tapped him all over. It is not solid black coloring......very odd.

I think that I will use the wait and see approach....feeding a mix of flakes, dried blood worms, and shrimp pellets.

And no....I don't have birds....and no snails in this tank.

Thanks all!
 
it happens in pond raised fish since exposure to the necessary hosts is always possible. you can see why it's rare in aquarium fish not previously raised in ponds.
 
Don't mean to hijack the thread or anything but, if it's decided by everyone that it's natural, it could be a possible answer to the original poster's question. I have honey gouramis in my tank. I've had them for well over a year now. Their color always look great. However, there are times when their color becomes outstanding.......I mean redder than normal tails, very defined red on those feeler fins (really their pelvic fins) much richer canary yellow bodies and whiter underbellies (maybe due to the contrast of the richer yellow). In any event, when they get this amazing color going, they also tend to get black flecks from the head region on down to about the start of their anal fin, symmetrically on both sides of their bodies. The markings start right around the region of the operculum and kind of go diagonally down to the start of the anal fin. They're sparse, so there's no solid black coloration. It's just weird. And, eventually, it just goes away. Is this somehow tied into some natural biological cycle of these fish (gouramis) in general? Could this color change possibly indicate peak breeding status or something like that? I bring it up because the original poster is also talking about gouramis and now it's got me thinking.
 
Ghostshrimp55, that's a VERY good question. This is my first Gourami...so I am interested in the answer. Do these black specks sound like my description?

I don't see how this fish could have been exposed to the Black Spot parasite...unless the breeder that Wal Mart uses also has birds and snails....and I wouldn't doubt that.

I hope to hear from you again...this is getting interesting.

(NOTE: I started dosing with Melafix this morning...due to a tear near the Gourami's mouth. He must've hurt himself on the filter housing.)
 
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