White patches on Black Moore

Question
My black moore has white patches on the top of its head and is spreading onto top fin. Also belly looks white. These patches do not petrude from the skin, just looks to be the colour. I thought it may be fungus but have treated for that with no joy. It is still eating fine but sometimes sits on the bottom. It is kept alone in a 50litre tank. I have checked PH and ammonia and no problems there. Any advice???

Answer
Hi Chris
What kind of fungus med did you use?  Usually a true fungus will look like cotton.  Well, I can think of a few possibilities of what the problem may be.

First, your ammonia and nitrites should be reading 0 ppm.  Nitrates should be under 20 ppm.  Ph, as long as it's staying at a steady reading, should be fine.  Ammonia can actually burn the fish's skin, and it will turn black(hard to tell on your fish though) when it's healing.

If that all checks out ok, it could be a parasite/protozoan problem.  A few come to mind, flukes, trichodina, costia, and chilodonella.  Usually, the fish will also be showing signs of external parasites, like scratching or rubbing on objects in the tank, flashing or darting around, gasping at the surface, laying at the bottom is common with fluke infestations.  With chilodonella, the fish will develop a whitish/blue tint on the skin around the head area.  

The good news is, all of those treatments pretty much call for the same thing, a bit of salt and Quick Cure will usually take care of it.  I'm going to post some links for you, with better descriptions of symptoms for each disease, and also the treatment options are listed:

Chilodonella and Costia(need to search through the keywords, they're both listed on there:

http://www.goldfishinfo.com/ailment1.htm#chil

Costia:
http://www.kokosgoldfish.com/Costia.html

Trichodina:

http://www.kokosgoldfish.com/Trichodina.html

With just those 2 symptoms you mentioned, it's kind of hard to pinpoint exactly.  That's why I wanted you to read through the other symptoms for each to see if maybe you notice something else.  I was kind of leaning towards the flukes, but that white patch on the head isn't necessarily a symptom of that.  But, that does sound like possibly chilodenlla.  Well, it's good he still eating.  But, I would get some salt and some meds in there as soon as possible.  They can go down hill very quickly.  Hopefully you have Quick Cure available where you live.  I think it says the main ingredient you want to look for is formalin, which is common in ich/parasite medicines.

Hope that helps, and let me know if you have more questions!

Christy