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Terrible pic, I know, but all I have at the moment. So, the water in my pond has cleared enough lately for me to see the fish pretty well around the feeder at feeding time. What I just noticed is that about one third of all of the Bluegill seem to have this white fungus looking stuff along their pectoral Dorsal fin. It is nowhere else on their bodies, just along the top. Any idea what this is and why it showed up?

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Last edited by JKS3613; 11/07/19 04:50 PM. Reason: Wrote pectoral instead of Dorsal
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I've never seen anything like that. Are you sure it's on the pectoral fins? Kind of looks like it is on the dorsal fin in the picture.


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Yes, dorsal. sorry. Was in a rush and screwed that up. Thanks for catching.

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One factor in conditions similar to this that I've seen have been high stress. But this can be from heat stress 2 months ago-probably not recent. Only thing I know of that you can do to help is fish for them and give each fish you catch a salt soak.
Treating the entire pond for fungus affects EVERYTHING.

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My larger CNBG were devastated by fungus in fall 2017, covered about half their bodies.


7ac 2015 CNBG RES FHM 2016 TP FLMB 2017 NLMB GSH L 2018 TP & 70 HSB PK 2019 TP RBT 2020 TFS TP 25 HSB 250 F1,L,RBT -206 2021 TFS TP GSH L,-312 2022 GSH TP CR TFS RBT -234, 2023 BG TP TFS NLMB, -160




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I agree with Snipe that there is a cause and effect. The cause my still be there or long gone.

Not qualified to have much of an opinion, but I wonder if there could be a bacterial infection involved. Do you feed your fish? If so you might consider lacing the feed with an antibiotic. We need one of the gurus to chime in.


4 acre pond 32 ft deep within East Texas (Livingston) timber ranch. Filled (to the top of an almost finished dam) by Hurricane Harvey 9/17. Stocked with FHM, CNBG, RES 10/17. Added 35lbs RSC 3/18. 400 N LMB fingerlings 6/18
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Yes, I do feed them daily. I also aerated all summer, running only at night. The only issue that I've had was back in May when I first started up my aeration system. Even though I started very slow, I still had a pretty good fish kill (approx 50) consisting only of large bluegill. Is it possible some could still be feeling the effects of that? I'm really puzzled because other than that one incident in May, the pond has looked great.

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Originally Posted By: Snipe
One factor in conditions similar to this that I've seen have been high stress. But this can be from heat stress 2 months ago-probably not recent....

I see it here almost every year. A shallow pond with Summer surface temps in the upper 90's hit's my CNBG hard.I rarely see it on smaller fish.

Last edited by FireIsHot; 11/09/19 08:15 PM.

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In your experience, does it usually resolve on its own? or is it a fatal condition?



Originally Posted By: FireIsHot
Originally Posted By: Snipe
One factor in conditions similar to this that I've seen have been high stress. But this can be from heat stress 2 months ago-probably not recent....

I see it here almost every year. A shallow pond with Summer surface temps in the upper 90's hit's my CNBG hard.I rarely see it on smaller fish.

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Over time, it will resolve.. The end result may or may not be what you want. One of the biggest factors in stress related events is over crowding. There are certain treatments that "could" be added to the water but it affects every organism in the pond, including beneficials.
You see this in the larger fish but it also affects the youngest as well-but you may never see them or the mortality of.
You CAN help this, even though to a smaller scale, by catching and doing the salt soak as I said above. It'll kill the fungus on every fish you can dip, and the more you can dip before hard winter, the better they will look next spring.

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Originally Posted By: JKS3613
In your experience, does it usually resolve on its own? or is it a fatal condition?...


The CNBG in my hatchery pond got a fungus early this last spring, and it pretty well wiped them out. A few hung around for several months, but ultimately died. I haven't seen the same with the white tipped CNBG, and I never saw any floaters.


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I have successfully treated various bacterial infections in my cages with antibiotics designed for livestock - add it to feed and over the course of two weeks the infection was knocked out. Mixed water and AB and fed moistened, sinking feed to encourage fast feeding. Use gloves when messing with the AB and medicated feed.


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Thanks guys. Teehjaeh57, Have you ever run across this white dorsal fin fungus before? So bummed since I thought everything was going great. I guess I'll see what happens. I'm not in a position right now to catch and treat them, so hopefully, the condition will resolve on its own. Big cold front rolled in last night so I went ahead and turned the aeration off until Spring. From everything I've read here, it doesn't do much good once surface temps get below 65 or so. Again, thanks for the advice everyone.

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Yes, I've seen fungus develop on transported fish especially where they've lost scales due to handling issues. That seems to be the origin of the fungus I have dealt with, but I've also seen it in the fins. Infections are obviously much easier transmitted through caged fish, so that's why the AB treatments were so critical in my cases. For pond fish I wouldn't lose too much sleep - you could still hand feed AB medicated pellets and take your chances that the infected fish are getting some, but that is a lot of effort. The strongest fish will make it through this episode for you, some natural selection happening, so that's a bit of a silver lining. Keep your eyes on those fish, catch some if you can, try to identify if it's getting worse or abating. Post photos, we are here to help.


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Will do. Thanks again!!!!

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JKS, if you do get to catch/trap fish, with fungus I would HIGHLY recommend you treat those you can with a salt solution, it only enhances the overall health of the fish. It cleans gills, kills fungus spores and stimulates the natural slim production process. TJ is probably right in that nature will rebalance the situation but you can maximize survival with a salt soak of anything you catch.

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Snipe,

Please walk us thru how you do the salt bath treatment. Do you have a recipe for the salt bath or do you just keep adding salt until the solution is saturated (no more salt will dissolve)? How long should the fish be left in the bath? After the bath, how should the fish be handled(bath of clear water)?

Thanks!

Last edited by Bill D.; 11/14/19 08:21 AM.

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Stock salt-straight NaCl, obtained from most farm supply stores.
Mix this in a 5 gal bucket of pond water until complete saturation is obtained. Water turns grey in color. Place fish into solution and usually within 1 minute they will float belly up. When they do, move them into another 5 gal bucket of straight pond water. Within a minute or 2 they will be back to normal at which point you can move them back to pond.
Several minutes in the solution won't kill them but each species is different in amount of time they will tolerate. I've left SMB in the solution during net samples and forgot about them for 4-5 minutes and never have lost any. This works on all scaled fish that I'm aware of but it will smoke a catfish in seconds.
I use (and recommend) neoprene gloves when handling the fish and I wet my gloves in the salt solution if touching the fish.
Augie came and picked up some YP from me earlier this fall and as I was measuring and weighing, I'd chuck them in the salt bath and Augie would pull them out after the floated belly up and put them in the straight water bucket. Within minutes they were ready to go into tank.
It's a very effective way of cleaning up parasites and/or prepping for movement. I also would highly recommend this for any transferred fish that may get bucket stocked-before stocking into pond of course, as it will pop every egg/spore of an external parasite literally breaking the cycle of those parasites, including flukes and it's the only external treatment I've found that will eliminate any fungus.
I'm sure there are formulas for entire pond treatment but that's going to remove many organisms that are desirable.

Last edited by Snipe; 11/14/19 01:59 PM.
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Thanks Snipe, I am going to try my hand at it this weekend. Just curious, approx how much salt is needed to fully saturate 5 gal?

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Thanks Snipe! smile


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We use to do the same thing as children. But we would do it with crawdads before they went into the boiling water.


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Originally Posted By: JKS3613
Thanks Snipe, I am going to try my hand at it this weekend. Just curious, approx how much salt is needed to fully saturate 5 gal?

It depends on the water but somewhere between 16-20ozs per 4-5 gal of water.

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Ok, after reading old threads here and the article from U of FLA concerning "red spot disease," it appears that is indeed what my fish have. My question now is it beneficial to catch them and dip them in a salt bath or not? I have done so with probably 50 or so, but with water temps about 55 degrees, I wonder if I am doing more harm than good. I'm going to hold off on dipping anymore until I can get more info.

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Handling fish in 55 degree water wouldn't be an issue for me...when water temps get into the 40's I don't transport fish and try to handle as little as possible - but I think you should be fine in the 50's.


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Thanks Teehjaeh57. What about the salt dip itself? Is that beneficial?


Originally Posted By: teehjaeh57
Handling fish in 55 degree water wouldn't be an issue for me...when water temps get into the 40's I don't transport fish and try to handle as little as possible - but I think you should be fine in the 50's.

Last edited by JKS3613; 11/19/19 04:56 PM.
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