White Bumps On Fin

Question
Hi Chris!

I am hoping you can help me out.  I have a 75 gallon that's been up for over a year with 5 goldfish and 2 black skirt tetras.  I'm running two filters...a Penguin 170 and an AquaClear 50.  PH is 7.8, nitrite is 0, nitrate 10-15ppm.  I clean it about once a month and I take out about a third of the water, because that's how long it takes me to get through the gravel.

I have been ok with this setup until I introduced two new baby goldfish and a mossball.  I am regretting the fact I did not quarantine them, because I had a run of fishy crud after that.  I did a treatment of melafix and pimafix, did a water change and then the fungus tabs from Jungle.

That fishy crud was mostly a grey/white coating on almost all of the fish.  Two had white pimply bumps (reminded me of a pimple that a human would get), which I attempted to remove with tweezers.  After that, everyone else was coated in white/grey and two had some serious fin rot going on.

The one tetra started this bump after the first treatment ended...it looked like a tiny part of his dorsal fin split down to where connects to his body.  It got a little white bump at the base, and then that went away, so I left him alone.  But what I thought was fin (it's now red brown) has a white tail coming out of it.

A few days ago, a goldfish got a small white bump on his dorsal fin.  It has some blood streaks around it, and now it's growing a white tail and it looks like it's poking through the fin to the other side and going towards his body.

It half looks like what I've seen for a columnaris infection with a worm coming out of it, except it doesn't really look like either one.  Both fish are quite happy, eating and doing normal fishy things.

If you have any idea what it may be, I would appreciate your feedback.

Thanks!

-Jaime

Answer
Hi Jaime;

It sounds like a parasite called Anchor Worm, scientifically known as Lernaea Elegans. They have to be manually plucked from the fish, even if medications do manage to kill them. Your fish may also have a secondary bacterial infection. But, since they act okay otherwise the whitish coating could simply be irritation by the fish scraping themselves in an attempt to remove the parasites. Here is a web page about those nasty little devils and how to get rid of them;

http://www.kokosgoldfish.com/Anchor%20Worm.html

Good luck...

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins