Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Sunfish-Including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass White fungus on small fish

Agree with Essup you get what you pay for. My fish condition was horrible on tractor supply feed and when I switched it was an amazing transformation

The timing of this fungus breakout make me very suspicious of the Aquamax. I went back and looked at when I started feeding it and the fungus breakout started shortly after. The fish were growing well using the cheaper food and the ponds natural food.

Salt treament seems to be helping. The fry are looking very healthy now. I'm hoping that most of the infected fish end up in the belly of my bass and fatten them up for winter.

Changing the food mid-stride can cause a certain level of stress. I doubt it caused (or was the ONLY cause) but could have contributed in some way to the problem-maybe.
If you decide to change foods again in the future I would recommend an addition of 10% volume of the new feed for the first 7-10 days, maybe 15% increase every 10 days or so from there.
I personally believe MVP is top tier feed and highly unlikely (I'm 99.9% sure) that the feed had anything to do with the fungus outbreak and I believe within 2-3 days (in stable weather) there should have been an increase in feeding activity.

I'm curious if the bass will chow down on the fungus affected fish.

I've seen a lot more affected fish swimming around then have turned up as floaters. I'm hoping most of the sick fish end up in a bass's stomach.

According to Lusk, very few dead fish float

I'm curious if Bass will eat the fungus infected fish or will avoid them.

Saw a couple big bluegill (9-10") with big fungus infections todays. Makes me sick.

Have you tried the neomycin treated feed??? It's been suggested many times.
It's also been suggested that treating the entire pond with salt is not sufficient to treat fungus, and on top of that, the salt has other effects on the ecosystem that are not beneficial in higher concentrations.
If stress factors are present that are optimum for fungus growth it's quite possible the entire population is affected in some manner, so Bass present may not be interested in normal feeding patterns that would suggest they may devour infected fish.
Point-blank, I believe you have a water quality issue that has brough this situation on, and I would highly recommend you contact Lusk and get his advise before you have an irreversible situation.

I saw someone suggested neomycin feed but the fish aren't feeding much now with temp around 62 degrees (almost no surface feeding) and the bass don't take feed so not going to pursue it at this time. I'm happy with the salt treatment - it seemed to help stem the fungus plague and I'll probably do it again in the future as I always found it helped in home aquariums.

That said I am still curious if anyone knows if Bass will eat a fish dying from fungus. That would be at least be a plus if the surviving bass can stuff themselves on the sick fish.

Over last couple days we have had torrential rains and pond is super high - haven't seen any dead fish for last few days.

I have a question about the salt treatment in the aquarium.

How much salt do you add to how many gallons of water in the aquarium? Once the salt is added to the water, how long does that water stay in the aquarium?

.8oz per gallon of water is the correct dose for fungus. About 390lbs of salt per acre ft of water. 3 acft?? about 1200lbs just to treat a fungus. This is the minimum dose recommended.

I ended up putting 600lbs of salt in. Probably not enough to cure sick fish but hopefully helped keep unaffected fish healthier.

The fungus was pretty much affecting 50%or more of the fish I could see in shallows at the time.

Since treating the pond it seemed like the smaller fish I could see in shallows were not nearly as afffected. Fry in particular look better. So far no large bass have ended up as floaters - had a couple yearlings I could see with fungus end up dead.

I suspect if there was an enviromental factor it may be that the fish carrying capacity was at the edge. Had a pretty high number of large bluegills in pond. Next year - assuming that most of fish survived I'll start harvesting some larger female BG and small bass.

Do you have a way to test the PPM of the salt in the pond?

If not, go buy one of these and end the guesswork! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GC7JCV...Y2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

That will tell you how fast the salinity dissipates too.