# Black Spots on Black Skirt Tetras



## jessiepbg (Oct 19, 2011)

I came home tonight to find that two of my black skirt tetras, which have grey stripes instead of black stripes, each had two 2-3 mm diameter dark black spots on one side of their body. (I don't know why they're grey rather than black, they were like that when I bought them and otherwise look healthy) There's no swelling around them and they're acting pretty normal and eating well. I've got a 29 gallon tank that cycled for almost 4 months before I put fish in due to lack of funds and time. It's currently stocked with 4 black skirt tetras, 5 harlequin rasboras, 1 pearl gourami, 1 bristlenose catfish, and 1 tiny julidochromis. They were put in one species at a time with at least a week-long gap between new additions. They get about a 10% water change every week with tap water treated with prime. 

These tetras have been kind of a headache/head scratcher. I put them in the tank first and one had a cloudy eye. I treated the tank for ich and it went away. When I added the catfish, they were fine, but when I added the rasboras after there had been fish in the tank for almost a month, the cloudy eye reappeared. I treated for ich again and it went away again. Then I added the gourami and the cichlid. The fish who had gotten the cloudy eye the first time was fine, but one of my smaller ones started hanging out towards the back of the tank. About 2 weeks ago he came back out and looked like heck, his top fin had a big chunk missing out of it and both eyes were extremely cloudy. I found a forum post saying someone had luck with melafix on a similar case with the same species, so I treated my tank with it, but it didn't seem to make a difference. When he started looking even worse and having trouble swimming, I moved him to one of those dip and pour containers and hung it inside the tank. I added a few drops of both pimafix and melafix as a last ditch effort. He got worse over the course of the next day and passed overnight about two nights ago. 

All my parameters seem fine. My ammonia is 0 and my nitrate and nitrite are well within normal range. All my other fish seem fine and they're not behaving any different than usual. Even when my larger fish had the cloudy eye, he had a healthy appetite and was active. The smaller one that passed lost his appetite after he showed up with the torn fin. 

I'm pretty new to fish, this is only my second tank, the first being a 10 gallon. I've never had any of the species in this tank before so any advice would be appreciated. Is this something to worry about and how should I treat it? I can't really find any cases that match my symptoms with a google search. 

Pictures (excuse my cheap camera, I did the best I could):


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## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

you have fish that are territorial. The gourami likely wants to be boss.. They are nasty fish for the most part.
Julios are also an aggressive fish.
Rasboras are nippy and black skirts are also territorial. 
There is no such thing as a normal range for nitrites, the tank is not cycled unless the reading is 0. 
How did you cycle your tank for 4 months without fish? Did you add some form of ammonia daily to it? If not the tank has likely been cycling with fish in it and that could be the reason the fish are getting sick. 
There is a disease called blackspot. you could research it on the internet and see what to do for it.


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## jessiepbg (Oct 19, 2011)

mousey said:


> you have fish that are territorial. The gourami likely wants to be boss.. They are nasty fish for the most part.
> Julios are also an aggressive fish.
> Rasboras are nippy and black skirts are also territorial.
> There is no such thing as a normal range for nitrites, the tank is not cycled unless the reading is 0.
> ...


I'm aware that my tank is more semi-aggressive than anything, but there's no missing fins or injuries. I never see any of them chasing the others except that the 4 black skirt tetras will nip at each other, but they leave the other species alone. The gourami is a pearl and is really laid back. I've never seen him as much as chase the other fish. He's probably the most peaceful thing in the tank besides the catfish. The rasboras dart around like idiots, but again, I'm not finding any torn-up fins and they never seem to chase anyone. The Julidochromis is a tiny species(subspecies?) and doesn't get too far from his driftwood cave except during feeding times. 

I cycled my tank with small doses of cleaning ammonia and seeded it with substrate from my established ten gallon. When I ended up with a high reading of nitrates, I did water changes to get it back down to zero. I called it cycled because after that process, when I added more ammonia to the tank, it was converted to nitrate within a few days to a week depending on how much was added. Before I added the fish, I did enough water changes over the course of a week or so to get everything back down to zero. It wasn't nearly as exact a process as I ought to have done, but I'm pretty sure it worked. None of the symptoms I've seen from my fish have been consistent with ammonia or nitrite poisoning as far as I've been able to find and testing shows no ammonia and no nitrites(misspoke in the last post. Nitrates are what I was finding in detectable amounts, not nitrites) in the tank even with twelve fish in it, so I'm going to assume I did something right. 

Thanks for the lead, but it seems like that blackspot disease is small raised specks, but what I'm seeing almost looks like just a pigment change. There's not raised spots or swelling and it's not around the head area, just on the body and fins. They haven't changed at all in size since my last post. The longer they go without any change and continue behaving normally, the less worried and more intrigued I get.


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## bmlbytes (Aug 1, 2009)

I don't know what the black spots are but I had to ask this. Why are you treating for ich when your fish get cloudy eyes? Ich looks like salt covering the body.

Like this:









You most likely got lucky that the cloudy eye went away. The fish's immune system probably made it go away rather than the medication. Treating with medications not designed for what you are treating for can be dangerous. That's like if you had a fever and someone gave you viagra to treat it. It won't do anything for the fever, and will probably cause some unintended side effects.

If they get cloudy eye again, do not treat with an anti-parasite (Ich is a parasite), but rather treat with an antibiotic (cloudy eye usually means bacterial infection).


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## jessiepbg (Oct 19, 2011)

It must have been the melafix that made the cloudy eye go away in the first instance then. I treated for ich because cloudy eyes were one of the symptoms listed for the disease and I hadn't ever had an ich outbreak to compare it to. Now that you've said that though, do you think that the ich meds might have something to do with it? I only used a half dose since I've got a catfish in there and I've done quite a few water changes since I put it in there. It's got benzaldehyde green and 1% PVP listed as ingredients if that brings up any red flags. I'm not seeing signs of stress in any of the tankmates, all of which were present during the treatment.


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## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

that picture is a perfect example of ick. I have never seen cloudy eyes with ick anyway. sometimes the fish will bump its eye on something and it fills up full of fluid and looks cloudy. other times it is a true infection. Lots of water changes can help with things like injuries.


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