# cotton mouth disease. Please Help =(



## ILikeFishies

Okay i've just diagnosed my fish and i think they have cotton mouth. I just had one guppy die yesterday, i noticed that his lips were all swollen and white and i took that guppy out and temporarily put him in another tank. So then i did some research and found out that it was cotton mouth, but my guppy died in a few hours. So this morning i woke up and i noticed my balloon molly's lips getting all swollen on one side and it looks very white and cotton-y
So i did lots of research and heres what i've found out so far.
1.lower the water temperature
i live in a pretty hot country so normal water temp here is about 30 to 31*C so i took some bags of ice and put it in the tank for awhile and managed to reduce the temp to 29*C, gonna reduce it some more in awhile since i heard that its bad to have a sudden drastic change in the water temp for your fish. Because higher temperatures will spread the bacteria even faster.

2.Adding Methylene Blue to your water -
Apparently i do not have methylene blue BUT what i do have is an anti spot treatment for treating ICH, And its active ingredient is Methylene Blue so i was wondering if i could add a couple of drops to my tank, then again i already added a couple of drops.

3. Adding salt - I've added some aquarium salt to my tank.
how does aquarium salt actually help in this situation?

4. Water changes -
i've also found some info saying that you should do lots of water changes but they didnt specify how much and how often?

So then i took out my tetras and my live plants and the fish that didnt seem to be affected by cotton mouth and put them in another tank to avoid the cotton mouth spreading because i think 3 of my fish already have it.

Any tips guys? it would be appreciated!


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## ILikeFishies

it would be nice if someone could give some advice here =/


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## Betta man

Try posting pics! Welcome to the forum. Do you live near a petco?? They usually have betta revive which works on most types of fish. It has methlyn blue and malachite green in it. If your fish gets too bad, you might have to kill it so that it doesn't suffer and is not contagious. I would recommend being very careful when using equipment from that tank, on other tanks as it will go from tank to tank and you will end up with very few beloved fishys. I hope your fish get better!


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## Betta man

I just noticed you live in malaysia. 
try ordering some meds. If you don't live by a petstore that sells stuff like that, try ordering it.


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## ILikeFishies

i think it would be too late for me to order it. I lost another guppy to the cotton mouth. and it had been only about 15 hours since i saw the first spec of white on her mouth =/.
the problem here is that i am going to another state for fathers day today! so i won't be able to get any medication .
The somewhat good news is that my balloon molly's lips aren't as swollen and cottony anymore compared to yesterday.

But what i really need to know if its safe for me to use the ich medication on cotton mouth since its active ingredient is methylene blue and apparently i've found out on google that using methylene blue is a common treatment for cotton mouth


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## emc7

A lot of ich meds are 50/50 methyl blue and formalin. You can certainly try it. columnaris is a nasty bacterial infection, but methyl blue kills a lot of stuff. But no med is entirely safe. My main concern is the temp. Methylene blue can lower the oxygen in the water and oxygen will likely be already low because of them. And formaldehyde has its own toxicity issues.

There are two schools of thought on disease. 

One is to medicate heavily and thoroughly (treat long enough to prevent med-resistant disease). The risk here is the meds can poison fish, reduce oxygen, & harm the bio-filter.

The other is to "keep the fish healthy" by strict QT, good nutrition, and clean water. When issue arise they try 'natural methods' like salt and tea tree oil. The risk here that fish may not survive the infection and that surviving fish will be life-long disease carriers and kill new fish. However, letting sick fish die, selects for disease resistant fish in the same way that natural systems do and the next generation may be healthier. 

IMO "natural" methods work good for mild injuries like tail-chewing and mild cases of fin-rot. But severe bacterial infections like cotton mouth usually need antibiotics because they kill too quickly for the fish to fight off the infection. 

Usually by the time you see cotton on the mouth, that fish is doomed and your goal is to keep the rest of the fish from getting as sick.

The infection was likely triggered by stress from high temp. So cooling, aeration, clean water and salt (esp. for livebearers) may be enough or it may already be too late even without med.

I'm sorry I'm not helpful. In your situation,I would try ich med and put as much aeration as possible on the tank. A full dose, not just a few drops. You should know it will stain your decor and sealant blue. Methylene blue was once widely used as a microscope stain dye and biologists noticed it killed a lot of the things they were looking at. 

In aquaculture, many run a cost/benefit analysis on whether to treat and how much. Under-treatment is common. So the cheaper the fish, the greater the chance of them carrying disease.


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## ILikeFishies

emc7
You were very helpful. Thank you. Actually i think the fish is not totally doomed once you see a white speck. My balloon molly's mouth was swollen and the left side of his bottom lip was getting quite fuzzy. But after adding some drops of the ich treatment and lowering the temp(by taking bags of ice cubes and letting it sit in my tank, which btw took a very long time to bring the temp down! But thats the only choice i have since chillers are expensive..or so i heard) my balloon molly's lip swelling has reduced and the white fuzzy stuff isn't so...err fuzzy anymore.
I don't think i have the heart to kill my off my fish =/ But i've already quarantine the 2 remaining fish (both balloon mollies) Though one of them doesn't seem to have any symptoms of cotton mouth, but i THINK i do see some sort of white fuzzy things near her mouth, so im not gonna risk it and mix her with my other fish. Normal water temperature here is 31*C but i've managed to bring down the temp to 25*C which i've read is a good temperature to stop the bacteria from spreading

how am i supposed to get aeration in my tank? i only have a filter and a light

i usually don't add any salt to my tank because i have live plants,tetras,barbs and those tiny little snails in them. I heard that plants don't do good in salt water and so does barbs and tetras.
Wish i could add salt though but i don't wanna risk hurting any of my fish. But for the time being i've put my tetras and barbs in another tank. So far i think the 2 mollies are doing fine, they still have their appetite and they are just as active as usual. 
But i am trying real hard to maintain the cool temperature, i even woke up in the middle of the night to get more bags of ice >_<. I really wanna save them


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## emc7

Normally aeration is added with an airstone, airline and airpump, Bubbling air at the bottom of the tank get oxygen in the water and also moves the water so the oxygen is spread throughout the tank. This is esp. effective for tall tanks, but you can also use a powerhead to move water about.

What sort of filter do you have? If you have an air-pump driven filter, you can crank up the air or add an air-stone. If you have HOB, you can drop the tank's water level until you get a nice loud waterfall, but not far enough that the flow slows or you lose the siphon. If you have an internal, you can set it on something in the tank or adjust the output so that disturbs the surface. If you have a canister, you can put a spray bar on the output and aim it above and across the surface of the water. The idea is to increase the air/water interface. More oxygen will get into the water and evaporation of water will cool the tank. You can also aim an electric fan across the water's surface.

You can take several plastic water bottles and freeze them and keep rotating them in and out of your tank as they melt.

It may be that your fish have some resistance to the disease and they will be able to fight it off once they are no longer in distress from the conditions. 

IME, mollies and guppies do better in hard or salty water. I think it helps their immune system work, but I have no proof of this. Only the personal experience that every fish I lost to cottonmouth/columnaris/black molly disease was in soft, acid water when it got sick. 

Methylene blue isn't good for plants either. At effective doses, it absorbs most of the light plants need. And other ingredients in an "ich cure" may also be toxic to plants or it may contain salt or copper (which can kill snails). 

Medicating is much easier in a hospital tank, but a disease may come back if you don't treat the main tank.


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## ILikeFishies

hmm airstones. How does that actually work? if im not mistaken i have seen some in shops but i had no idea what it actually did..i also saw somethings about carbon or something related. Had no idea what that was for though

I don't think i can get air stones or anything like that atm because in an hour or so im gonna be out of the state, luckily my sister will be home and she agreed to help me do water changes, adding the aquarium salt and some ich medication. I can honestly say that my balloon molly seems to be getting better, he's quite active now and back to his usual self.
I also have to occasionally add bags of ice into the water, its pretty hard to have a constant temperature of about 25*C since everything warms up pretty quickly.
But right now im treating my main tank. I've taken out my other fish and put them in another one and i've done lots of water changes for that tank so and im also trying to maintain a cool temperature for that tank. not easy i can say but im trying.
They look pretty well but i tried feeding them some blood worms today. The 2 balloon mollies in my main tank ate them like sharks, and my last surviving guppy ate it like a shark too. But my tetras and barb and 2 platy didn't seem so interested in the worms. The last time i fed them too they didn't seem so interested. But when i feed them pellets they seem to enjoy it. I wonder why =/
my friend's platy doesnt enjoy blood worms too.

Btw, i just realised that i left my male balloon molly and female one in the tank all alone together ..is it possible that they could breed? because littlte baby balloon mollies would be sooo adorable and cute haha
but of course in the condition they're in now i hope they don't. I dont want their babies to get affected somehow


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