Looking for confirmation of Black spot disease in white cloud minnows

[Criscar]

Good afternoon!

Out of the blue several of my golden White Cloud Mountain minnows look like they have a fine dusting of pepper on their backs, I’m assuming this is black spot disease likely introduced by a stowaway snail on one of the marginal plants I recently bought (no water birds have ever found my little puddle of a pond as far as I know). Just looking for confirmation if anyone else has seen this in person in their fish. Wasn’t necessarily planning to do anything about it if it is BSD. It’s perhaps 3-4 minnows affected, not visible on any other fish at this time. The spots look black in real life, but appear a bit reddish in the photos, which frankly I’m amazed I got any of 1.25” minnows darting around with dust mote sized spots on their backs. Water parameters are A OK when checked last week (zeroes across the board), only thing new is started adding some flourish liquid plant fertilizer but obviously not pouring it directly on the fish

 

[jatracy192]

Hi- hope your gold white cloud minnows are doing well! I’m coming to everyone with what seems like ground breaking news… have searched all over for any info. regarding this issue and haven’t really found any. Almost all seem to agree it isn’t harmful/ could occur naturally from a non-harmful parasite (¿mainly from snails?)/ etc. but it is also pretty unanimous that we don’t like the dark speckles!

However, we are trading our 3 little guys in for some more Neon Tetras in our 13G cube because we want it to be just a tank for our school of tetras and Chilly Rasboras… and we hated that our GWCM had so much darkness scaling on their sides!

We added some new aquarium plants a few weeks ago to our standing 13G long that houses our Betta, 6 Espei Rasboras, and 1 Amano Shrimp- unfortunately these added plants had pond snails that took over our tank, growing from 1-3 to roughly 100 within days. The craziest part was that their waste covered everything and started wrecking the water, turning our healthy Betta to the point he was starting to show rapid signs of fin rot/ columnaris.

Note that at this time, we moved the GWCM from the cube which has neon tetras to the long (which currently had bad water), and we added Chilly Rasboras to our cube.

I started treating the Beta in a separate quarantine tank setup using a 50/50 split of new water and existing water and some spare driftwood- i also used an existing sponge and biomax inside the filter. Treated with common antibiotics (¿myasis?) for a week, small water changes often, then added aquarium salt after a week. We left him in this 5G quarantine tank for about 2 weeks until i had gravel vacced the 13G long several times, changed the water several times, and removed/ scrubbed the Mopani wood.

The reason i tell you all of this- we added our Betta back to our long last night and we knew we couldn’t add the minnows back in with the Betta (would never be able to get them out/ aggression) and we weren’t comfortable putting them with our new tiny Chilly Rasboras. But we also knew that the quarantine tank had great water and a little aquarium salt would likely benefit the GWCM anyways. To my amazement- we woke up today and the speckles are GONE. Zero signs of them.

I know we had a ton of variables and things going on, but the only 3 explanations i have for the cure for the GWCM black speckles are:

(1) Aquarium Salt (75% positive)
(2) Common aquarium antibiotic (25% positive)
(3) GWCM finally in a tank with no other fish, but also no substrate/ plants/ etc. Just a HOB filter, spider wood, and pothos.

TLDR: Our GWCM have had black speckles in both our 13g cube and 13g long. We finally cleared them of the spots after moving them to a quarantine tank that we have been using for a couple of weeks as a Betta rehab tank. The quarantine tank has only spider wood, pothos, aquarium salt, and likely trace amounts of antibiotics remaining!

 

[Stephen Noble]

I am not a veterinarian and can only render an opinion based on past experiences having kept these fish outdoors. It might be my computer, but I don't see any black spots. Black spot disease usually causes fading of colors, isolation and lethargy. Your images show active, colorful fish. It looks to me that your fish are in breeding condition. The Golden White Cloud colors become strikingly beautiful when kept outdoors in a pond. Of course, I could be wrong. Are you able to scoop one of them out and get a better image?

 

[j.w]

@jatracy192