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#526274 09/24/20 06:36 PM
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I'm noticing that some of the small fish in my pond have patches of a fungus looking stuff on them. Have observed it on fatheads, BG and LMB fry.

Seem to be on maybe 1 in 20 fish. Tho may just notice them more as they stand out. Any ideas what this stuff is?

Have also noticed my small BG fry often have white lice type things attaching to them.

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The first things sounds something like 'ick.'

The second might be some kind of insect that attaches to small fish.

How big is your pond?

You may want to add some salt.


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I've seen ick in aquarium fish - this stuff looks more like cotton stuck to the fish - sometimes rather large.

Pond is 1 3/4 ac - not sure if I could add enough salt to make much difference.

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I heard there will be an abundance of salt in America around November 3rd. whistle


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Saprolignia…(cotton-looking fuzz patch)
You can mix a complete total saturation salt solution in a 5 gal bucket and fish for the culprits with this. As you catch them, place them in salt solution (straight Nacl) until they float belly up. leave for about 30 seconds after rolling over and then place them into a bucket filled with clean pond water until they are swimming normal. At that point you can release back into pond.
There is a parasite that is similar to lice that will attach to fish, this salt solution will literally fry them off. It dehydrates them so fast it kills the parasites.

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Originally Posted by Snipe
Saprolignia…(cotton-looking fuzz patch)
You can mix a complete total saturation salt solution in a 5 gal bucket and fish for the culprits with this. As you catch them, place them in salt solution (straight Nacl) until they float belly up. leave for about 30 seconds after rolling over and then place them into a bucket filled with clean pond water until they are swimming normal. At that point you can release back into pond.
There is a parasite that is similar to lice that will attach to fish, this salt solution will literally fry them off. It dehydrates them so fast it kills the parasites.

So far I've not seen it on any of my larger bluegill or bass. Not really practical to try to catch the litle fish in a fairly big pond. I'm hoping it will clear up some as the water is cooling and fish have less stress from heat. Water temp was pretty high most of summer.

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Any stressors to the fish, be it handling, water quality, parasites, etc., will leave them open to fungal and bacteria infections. They could be caused by the lice in the pond, see what you can do to cut down on the lice population and see if the fungal infections go away.


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Originally Posted by esshup
Any stressors to the fish, be it handling, water quality, parasites, etc., will leave them open to fungal and bacteria infections. They could be caused by the lice in the pond, see what you can do to cut down on the lice population and see if the fungal infections go away.

Most of the weed cover (water shield ) was killed this summer (some grew back). It probably kept the water a bit cooler with shade and provided cover.

Pond is too big to treat effectively so I guess I'll just monitor. Water temps are much cooler now so water should hold more oxygen now. The fish with fungus are easy to spot compared to the healthy fish so probably looks worse then it is.

Had a bunch of fish delivered last Friday - did see one floater HSB out of the 25 8" fish that were delivered. Other then that it has been rare to see a dead fish in pond.

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Getting tired of seeing small fish with fungus so ordered 200 lbs of food grade sea salt to add to pond (1 3/4 acre, 13' deep, ave 9' deep).

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Originally Posted by nvcdl
Getting tired of seeing small fish with fungus so ordered 200 lbs of food grade sea salt to add to pond (1 3/4 acre, 13' deep, ave 9' deep).

Check the local stores for this: https://www.mortonsalt.com/home-product/morton-pure-and_natural-crystals/

I don't know what is more cost effective, that or what you ordered. What PPM of salt are you looking to achieve in the pond?


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Originally Posted by esshup
Originally Posted by nvcdl
Getting tired of seeing small fish with fungus so ordered 200 lbs of food grade sea salt to add to pond (1 3/4 acre, 13' deep, ave 9' deep).

Check the local stores for this: https://www.mortonsalt.com/home-product/morton-pure-and_natural-crystals/

I don't know what is more cost effective, that or what you ordered. What PPM of salt are you looking to achieve in the pond?

I went with food grade sea salt from a restaurant supply house. More expensive than water softner salt but figure it will disolve faster also all the softener salts I can source locally seem to have additives. I saw a post were someone said 100lbs of salt per acre would bring up salinity to the right level to kill fungus so figure 200 lbs should be about right. The fish in my pond can survive brackish water (LMB, HSB, BG) so more worried about not putting enough in to make a difference.

Last edited by nvcdl; 10/11/20 07:21 PM.
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You're right that it's important to know if there are any additives to the salt. Not always easy to tell, actually. Walt Overton told me that they once lost a bunch of fish in transport because the salt had a tiny amount of arsenic added as a preservative. Harmless to humans in such low amounts, so minuscule that it was not even labeled, but lethal to stressed fish in a liquid environment.

Last edited by anthropic; 10/11/20 08:29 PM.

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Straignt NaCl you buy at farm stores- "stock salt"-no additives or anything else to worry about but treating the entire pond is something I will never speculate on because it never goes away and I don't know that this has been used by any of the bio's I work with. I'll defer to someone with actual experience in that.
The only thing I CAN add is be very careful if you have or intend to have any catfish as the salt will burn/kill them if concentration is too high

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I'm surprised that salt would bother catfish as the channel/blue catfish in the Potomac (brackish) don;t seem to have any issues.

In any event I don't have any cat fish. Saw a couple dead bluegill floating in the pond today - one small & one large so looks like the fungus may be taking a toll.

Would think that the salt would eventually disipate as water overflows pond.

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nvcdl, when someone says "X" pounds per acre, that isn't an accurate amount. An acre is a flat measurement, where pond water volume is measured in acre feet and one acre foot of water is one acre of water 12" deep. An acre foot of water has 325,851 gallons of water in it.

When fish are transported, the recommendation is to add 1.5# of salt to every 100 gallons of water. So, to treat one acre foot of water "to transport fish" you would need 4,888# of salt....... When I haul fish, I am typically carrying 1,200 gallons of water and use approximately 4 cups of that Morton Solar salt per 100 gallons of water with other conditioning agents and ammonia neutralizers. I was using "stock salt" but was finding white sand residue in the bottom of the haul tanks.

You might want to read this, and pay attention to the PPT dosage of salt and the time the fish can be in that concentration.

https://www.aquaculturealliance.org/advocate/common-salt-a-useful-tool-in-aquaculture-part-1/


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esshup, that's a very good point about "Time in Hauling".. Very good catch and bad on my part.
Fish can "live continuously" in "X" PPT. Conditioning for Hauling is totally different, and also the reason I backed away from treating an entire pond. Thank you for bringing that point up.

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Snipe, I agree about the whole pond thing. While the treating isn't that big of a deal, how do you exchange the pond water to get them out of the treated water????


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Originally Posted by esshup
nvcdl, when someone says "X" pounds per acre, that isn't an accurate amount. An acre is a flat measurement, where pond water volume is measured in acre feet and one acre foot of water is one acre of water 12" deep. An acre foot of water has 325,851 gallons of water in it.

When fish are transported, the recommendation is to add 1.5# of salt to every 100 gallons of water. So, to treat one acre foot of water "to transport fish" you would need 4,888# of salt....... When I haul fish, I am typically carrying 1,200 gallons of water and use approximately 4 cups of that Morton Solar salt per 100 gallons of water with other conditioning agents and ammonia neutralizers. I was using "stock salt" but was finding white sand residue in the bottom of the haul tanks.

You might want to read this, and pay attention to the PPT dosage of salt and the time the fish can be in that concentration.

https://www.aquaculturealliance.org/advocate/common-salt-a-useful-tool-in-aquaculture-part-1/

Obviously it is a lower salinity than can be achieved in a truck or small pond - I've added 350 lbs of salt to my 1 3/4 acre pond (average depth 9'). Figure it won't hurt and might help. Found another large bluegill dead today and my first dead bass (about 11" long), also saw a live bass sunning himself who had fungus. Saw a couple dead small bluegill and some very sick ones also. Hopefully the salt will help the healthy fish survive. Figure it is better then doing nothing. In aquariums that I've added salt to I usually only add maybe a couple tablespoons to 100gals and it seems to help.

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esshup, I have never treated an entire pond. My fear/concern with this is each species and size of each species -as you well know-can react differently long-term.
I have several concerns on treating the entire pond for a couple of other reasons with one being a lower concentration of salt does little to certain types of fungus if concentration is not "hot" enough to extract life supporting water/moisture from the fungus to actually end it's cycle. The salts have to be high enough concentration to also stimulate slime coat production, which in my experience, is only achievable in a more controlled environment such as the tank method using a complete saturation to a point the fish lose equilibrium and are carefully monitored through that process to ensure the time period is such they are removed to fresh water where they slowly regain that equilibrium, right themselves and color fully returns. The fungus spores are completely sucked dry and the enhanced production of slime coat immediately protects the areas affected.
I will add this also cleans gill flukes and increases gill function very quickly.
In lower concentrations, I have no experience, documents or data to provide conclusive evidence that treating a pond with salt will "fix" this situation.
I feel strongly this action "could" adversely affect the eco system in other ways that may not show up or even be recognized.
We treat all fish collected by net samples-whether gill nets or trap nets in this manner, I have used this for 2 years now on my personal pond during angling and netting and have yet to kill a fish.
My personal recommendation would be to utilize Bob Lusk's recommendations of mixing neomycin in fish food, mixing well and treating until condition disappears.
I'm not comfortable with any other method to actually treat the entire pond, but there well may be others.

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Snipe, I agree. If the salt granules are just thrown into the pond vs. dissolved 100% in a bucket of water and then that water introduced to the pond, they could sink to the bottom before dissolving and adversely affect the invertebrates in that area that are living at the bottom of the pond.


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Added a total of 500 lbs of salt to the pond over this week.

Today was the first day this week that I did not observe any dead fish floating in pond. Had observed at least a dozen small buegill, three full size BG and a 11" LMB floating earlier in the week.

Don't plan to add anymore salt at this point. One thing I noticed was that when salt was dumped in small fish liked to swim above it as it disolved.

I'm curious about where the fungus infection started. I did notice some fungus on some shiners that were stocked in the spring but I didn't notice any fungus on BG until September. Curiously it was around this time I switched to the fish based Purina AquaMax Sport Fish MVP. I'm wondering if the food may have introduced a strain of fungus. I've noticed in my aquarium that some infections seem to originate from processed fish foods. Think I will stop using the Purina product once I use it all and go back to the cheaper non-fish protein based food.

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I honestly believe it has nothing to do with the food.
Fungus, Saprolignia in particular is a sign of stress, whether it be high temps, low DO, poor water quality, etc.. Something sets it off and is usually a sign something is not right.

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I doubt it was the food too. You should be looking into water quality issues. Lower quality food will get you into trouble quicker than higher quality food, i.e. more passes through the fish and contributes to lesser water quality.


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Not sure it was the food but the issue cropped up at the same time I switched to it and got bad fast. Seems to me to be a virulent strain of fungus as if it was poor conditions think the problem would have gottton bad in the high heat of summer rather than when water was cooling in early Sept.

I was on the fence about using it anyway as it is twice the cost of the Tractor Supply food (which fish seemed to do ok on) so will discontinue using it.

Saw one small floater BG today. Saw several mid sized fish 4-6" with fungus infections on my dam side of pond but shallow side fish looked much better then that had last week - saw plenty of healthy looking small fish. Not seeing as much fungus on the fry either (a couple weeks ago most were developing fungus).

Only issue I could think with water would be that a lot of the vegetation was denuded this year by herbicides. Could be that it helped keep pond cooler and more oxygenated. Next year I plan to let it grow back except on the shallow side bank.

Pond has been growing lots of bryozoans which I'm told is a sign of good water quality.

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Originally Posted by nvcdl
Not sure it was the food but the issue cropped up at the same time I switched to it and got bad fast. Seems to me to be a virulent strain of fungus as if it was poor conditions think the problem would have gottton bad in the high heat of summer rather than when water was cooling in early Sept.

I was on the fence about using it anyway as it is twice the cost of the Tractor Supply food (which fish seemed to do ok on) so will discontinue using it.

Pond has been growing lots of bryozoans which I'm told is a sign of good water quality.

Well, technically yes, the food is twice the cost of the Tractor Supply food, but in actuality, the Tractor Supply food is more expensive than the Purina Aquamax MPV if you consider the cost of what a pound of fish flesh grown by the Tractor Supply food costs vs. what a pound of fish flesh costs that is grown by using Purina Aquamax MPV. Optimal Fish Food is even cheaper than Purina Aquamax MPV when you look at price that way.

You may not think so, but if you do a test measuring how much feed it takes to put the same amount of weight on the same amount of fish, you will see what I'm talking about.


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