Note: the treatment of whitespot...

Well, for those following the saga of my fish there has been a new development... A white one, or several.

I tried to take a picture, but the fish it's on is hiding at a bit of the glass it's hard to get to... You might be able to make it out - the white spots on the tips of his fins... It's a disease called, originally, White Spot - or alternatively Ich which is an even better name.

It's only on one of the new gouramis, so it must have come with them when we bought them. I guess that's why you're meant to 'quarantine' new fish for two weeks - but we don't exactly have an extra tank to do that in so...

Anyway. It's a parasite, which grows on the fish (hence the white spots). Eventually they drop off and lie on the bottom of the tank, eventually exploding and releasing thousands of tiny little parasites, which attach themselves to the fish and start the cycle again. The other fish have been behaving oddly and, even though it's not likely they're actually affected yet, the best (and only) way to treat it is at the stage when all the little parasites are floating around in the water.

It's a really common fish tank disease, so the treatment is very commonly available too, thankfully. Little bottle and pipet. The ridiculously blue liquid inside the bottle is one of the more dangerous I've come across - stains pretty much everything it comes into contact with, and contains formaldehyde so if it comes into contact with you it burns. This is not something I'd immediately want to inflict upon my poor fish - but apparently this is what you do...

We'll need to re-dose in a couple of days, but hopefully it'll be gone a week. Also advised is removing the carbon from your water filter (as this would act to filter the chemical) and to turn the tank up a notch (to about 26-27oC) as these relatively higher temperatures would kill of the parasite by themselves.

I'm going to cross my fingers, and I'll get back to you with how it turns out.