Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction what killed my bass av fungus or a mold

starting the last monday in nov. I added three largemouth bass and 40 three inch minnows to a 600n gal tank. the bass were 14 15 and 16 inches long. The tank is fed from my pond..the temp in the tank ,over a few weeks, went from 61 to 52 degrees F.. after two weeks at 51 I increased the temp.to 65 degrees F.. All was looking good. Two of the three fish started showing signs of bedding with some redness towards their tails while the third fish seemed to be teasing the other two. All minnows seemed scared which seemed normal to me.Starting around the 5 week the minnows started floating 5 or 6 a night and I started noticing small white spots on the two larger bass with the tail irritation. During these few weeks I would often do a 50 percent water swap and would also try to maintain 65 degrees. After the fourth day of death and white spots I did a 70 percent water swap and treated with Pimafix. The next day one of the two fish with the tail irritation was dead.The next day the other two were also dead. Up to this time all my weekly water testing results were good. I removed the dead both the bass and the minnows and continued a 7 day treatment with the Pimafix. With in a week all remaining minnows were flat lined. Can anyone here offer some insight as to what happened.

Couple of questions.

Re: Water testing.What did you test for, and what were the results?

How fast did the water temps increase/decrease? (i.e. "X" degrees per hour)

What was the source of the "new" water that you introduced into the tank?

Thank you for reach out! tested for PH =6.6 Ammonia=0 nitrite and nitrate were both good. Temp increase was about 3 degrees every two days and the flush water was supplied by my pond.. I believe the cause was Saprolegnia..perhaps brought on by the stress open sores on the tails or was introduced to my system by the minnows witch came from a fish farm .

When you move fish into tanks, handling procedures can be super critical of causing fungus and other stress factors-especially in the 50's. Did you add any salt or treat fish with salt during transfer? If you have redness or open sores, hydrogen peroxide and salt are your 2 best options.
2nd- FHM or GSH don't do well in tanks for reasons I have not been able to pin down. Raceways built specific to minnow holding are kept extremely high in O2, low in nitrogen and constantly moving.

Snipe, my holding tanks still have Rosy Reds in them, we will see how long they last. The holding tanks are more of a flow thru system with pond water, but a month ago I switched over to well water. I am still feeding the fish in them, and they are eating with water temps in the high 40's. I'm feeding Optimal Starter #4.

The Rosy Reds now are roughly 3" long. I was amazed that they grew that much from 1 1/2" fish in late July.

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Maybe a few photos will help identify.

I first noticed the small white growth on one fish on a Monday . By that Saturday the three bass were dead. The reason for the bass in the tank was to try to induce a early spawn.

My guess is the FHM were infected when introduced into the tank. Commonly outside sources of minnows can be infected. When dealing with tank culture it is always a good idea to first quarantine fish from unknown sources such as a fish farm or pet shop. Catching or acquiring the 3 bass also induces stress to them which makes them more vulnerable to numerous infections especially when netted or hand handled. Undue or unnatural temperature variations after handling and moving them are also forms of physical stress. The slime coating is the immune system for fish. One needs to kill fish to make the experience memorable. You are smarter today.

I am not a fish pathologist. Infection on the bass looks like the most prevalent fish disease - ich and is more common on warm and cool water species and not cold water fish such as trout. Ich is more common on cultured fish such as minnows. The life cycle is completed in around 4 days. Note there are several other organisms or conditions that can cause similar ich signs or symptoms. .Best proof of ich is remove one or two spots and mount it on a microscope slide with a coverglass - observe using a microscope. Ichthyophthirius multifiliis (ich) will have the protozoan - trophozoites present.

Regardless of what infected your bass IMO the source was from the FHM.

The white spots on the LMB look like ick to me. I have never seen ick on a fish in a pond habitat.

legacy pond, where did the bass come from, and how were they handled from catching them to releasing them in the tank?

esshup is correct. Ich is more common among cultured and aquarium fishes than among wild fishes.

I agree with both statements above, ich is more likely. There are many-MANY things that can be causing this on the Bass, Not sure that it will fix anything here but I do have some advise for handling if we know where the fish came from, the type of net-if used- length of time out of water, any chemical treatments before placing fish in tank, etc..
I wish I could tell you it's easy to figure out but sometimes it's not.
I can tell you for certain for a Bass to contract Ich, it is NOT 100% healthy and there is a link in the sequence that more than likely caused this.
If you can share the timeline and how things were done, maybe we can more accurately suggest the cause.

Good morning and thank you all ! These three bass all came from my pond .Tag 424 was the first to pass fallowed by tag 425 and 406. I have not looked up when these fish were first tagged by me but will when time allows. These fish were all caught by me the same day Monday November 27 th 2023 .. All three were pin hooked , netted with a 1 inch mesh , and ran to my tank 60 ft away. I always crush the barbs and try to keep handling to a minimum.. All was going well til Dec. 30 which is when I first noticed the two fish with the redness at their tails were starting to slow down and there were 5 or 6 minnows dead in the tank .On that Monday I noticed small spotting of white on the same two fish. By Thursday it was bad so I started treatment with the Pimafix. To little to late ..Death!!!!!

Has anyone else here tried to establish a early spawn for your Largemouth bass and if so how were your results ? My end game here is to create a successful spawn and raise them to one inch or so and introduce to my pond.. I feel the introduction of the minnows could have been the start of the problem and maybe pellet fed the three bass inthe tank. my next go at this will have to wait til late April or early May when the water temp in pond gets around 61. Any thoughts on this ?

Unless you have a way to adjust photoperiod AND temp, I doubt you will be able to get them to spawn earlier. That means keeping them indoors in a totally covered black tank with no light and you turn on a light over the tank for "X" amount of hours per day. ANY extra light will mess up the process.

The place that I know that worked with Walleyes to get them to spawn ANY month of the year fed the fish pellets and was able to manipulate both water temp and photoperiod.

Correct ! This go around I was able to control both tem. and light was also working on moonphase. My needed info is ick or Saprolegnia or more so how to reduce the possibility of this happening next time and if it does what actions should be taken to correct. My tank is 12 ft by 5 ft with 22 inches of pond water in my barn climate control.

3 cents advice. 1. Start earlier with catching the bass next time as in 30 days. 2. Have live food established at least 2 weeks ahead of time. 3. Also include some crayfish as live foods in addition to small fish. Consider larger shiners, BG or other sunfish.
Form you posts it sounds like the bass were pellet trained. Use premium pellets with high digestibility and low manure waste while the fish are in the tank; consider Optimal or Skretting both very good in recirc systems. .

legacy,

Sorry to hear about your sick bass, but this has been a very informative thread.

Is there any room on your property for a small growout/forage pond?

If so, I think you could get more bass fingerlings with less effort?

Put a few bass (enough for several breeding pairs) in well before the spawn. After the spawn, seine out or catch your brood stock and return them to the main pond.

Keep the bass fry well fed, and you could then stock bass fingerlings into your main pond at whatever rate you desire. With enough fingerlings, you could even sort for jumpers and only put the fastest growers in your main pond. You could stock in the fall, or even in the subsequent spring.

Start earlier! Well I did start in September with Two fish, one 14 inch and the second sixteen and they both did great for the first 8 weeks. They were not pellet trained and my bluegill feeder fish were starting to slow down in my trap so I was running out of a food supply. The worms were becoming harder and harder to come by as well as the salamanders and I was only catching one or two very small blue gill a day. For my birthday in November my wife gave me a electric mouse trap so one day after buying 4 dozen large goldfish and 4 dozen crickets from my local pet shop which they ate in a very short time, I turned to my new mouse trap. Much to my surprise the large bass wasted no time in ripping that mouse from my fingers. The nose barely touched the water when he attacked ! I only wish I had videoed that. At that point, I knew I needed a food source so I ordered my minnows. On the Sunday before the minnows were to arrive, I went to tractor supply and brought back a 100 gal stock tank that I spliced into my water feed line to my big tank. What I did not realize was when I was doing my splicing I must have rotated my supply line down into the tank. At 5 am the next morning when I checked up on my fish, I was met with the smell of death at the doorway. The rotation in the line became a water out line via syphon . The tank was dry and my two fish were dead. Knowing I was taking delivery a few hundred feeders, I filled up my large tank with pond water and waited. At noon two boxes of feeders showed up and went into the tank. What to do now I thought? Well like most of you would have done, I grabbed the biggest minnow... stuck it on a hook... and tossed it into the pond. Being the last Monday in November I was not overly optimistic. Thirty seconds later, a 10 inch bass is in the net. Wow that was quick... so I threw him back and put another minnow on the hook. Thirty seconds later... Bham ! I have a 14 inch bass back in my spawn tank. Well I did what any one of you would have done grabbed another minnow. Again 40 second later a second bass decided he would like to join my little experiment. Well...what are the chances of catching one more or even a larger bass on this same day that I killed my two spawning bass --that had been in my tank for 8 weeks on the last monday of November? The chances were great, because 50 seconds later a 16 inch bass started taking line. That was quite a day! Killed two good Bass caught four Bass and put three great Bass back into my spawn tank . After putting the three new Bass in the tank I removed as many of the minnows as I could. There were probably 70 minnows left in the tank.

Some things that might help.

Use a rubber net or a net with knotless netting. Net the fish, put it into a container with water and 1/2% salt solution to help stimulate slime coat as you take it from the pond to the tank. No more than 30 seconds out of the water. If you can, remove the hook before getting the fish out of the water, don't lay the fish down on the ground, even in the net.

It would be a LOT easier on you and your filter if you could get the fish to be pellet trained. Less load on the system.

Every day or every 2 days check water parameters Nitrite, Nitrate, Ammonia, O2 and temp. You want to keep O2 above 8 mg/l, 10 mg/l would be better. It's better to use an O2 tank than atmospheric air, because you will have a hard time getting the O2 up that high without pure O2. A LOX tank will last a lot longer than a compressed gas tank.

I'm not sure I could add much here other than having the tanks established for 30 days.
Salt dip as esshup said is very important.
1, Building needs to have at least 6hrs of full spectrum light a day synced with the middle of day length. No outside source of light is allowed.
Fish will not likely spawn the first season you have them in a tank. Bass (both SMB and LMB) are started at year zero in Oct, by bringing 5-7" fish indoors, feed and release back into ponds May 1st. Oct, repeat again with the same fish. 30-50% "may" spawn at 9-12". Use suitable spawntex mats for eggs to cling to.
By the end of May remove them and release back outdoors spawned or not.
Year 3 repeat and 70-80% will spawn.
2, when you want the fish to spawn, turn lights up to 14hrs and water temp up to 71-72 degs, they should blow eggs within 6 days.
3, We feed Koi and or Carp only because of FCR, Craws would be #3 in line. When you decide on time to turn lights and water up you need to remove all forage so they place emphasis on reproduction.
Somewhere between #1 & #2, we need to know how you are sexing the fish?
If you have more males than females it will be a constant battle but you need to know male numbers to have at the least the same number of 18X18" Spawntex mats.
After eggs are noted on the mats, they need to be pulled and dipped in Hydrogen peroxide solution at a specific concentration twice the first day and once every day until hatch.
I will add here that starting with larger 12-15" fish will take probably 3 years before you get them to spawn in tanks. If you start young fish and bring them inside in late fall every year, it will be way more successful continuing on from there.
EDIT-ich or Sapro.. Need to keep salt at 6-8PPT at all times if possible, this will help considerably.

Well said Snipe

Snipe is providing excellent high quality advice accumulated from years of experience. Heed it carefully and well and you will be successful for indoor spawning of bass. .

I am as curious as Snipe. How are you sexing the bass to know what to bring inside?

Thank you Snipe. I have had no death in my tank since raising the salt levels to 8 ppt.