12 replies to this topic

[mattknepley]

Here is the reason I was inquiring about sanitizing collecting gear. Hit my favorite hyperlocal (as Michael calls 'em) stream this AM. Was glad to see greenheads moving back into one particular stretch of it from which they had disappeared in late spring. All different sizes of them. Unfortunately, one had a mouth fungus, and a few others had this...

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This one also had some kind of tumor on its throat. Pictures were too poor to post.



The others that had the stuff from the pictures also suffered from some kind of weird lesion. I guess that's what it was. From their chins down to and especially in the area where their gills meet their throat, they had what I can best describe as whiteheads. They looked a lot like those nasty, painful, pussy zits one gets in high school. I first noticed these "fish zits" in the spring when the stream's tessellated darters seemed to suffer an epidemic of them. Only found one tessie today, and it had the zits. Not all greenheads had these issues, and no creek chub had any of it.

[littlen]

A little salt will clear that right up!

[mattknepley]

A little salt will clear that right up!

I felt awful for this guy, and for the tessies before him. Are we talking standard, non-iodine salt? If so, how much? If I had a quarantine setup sometime in the future I'd love to be able to help a couple of these folks out. (Of course then I'm stuck with them...) Is the salt a panacea for the three things I mentioned, or one of them in particular?

I think those are yellow grub flukes, transmitted by snails and fish-eating birds. The fish is just one host in the cycle. They can't go from fish to fish. A bird has to eat the fish to complete the life cycle.

BTW what's the fish? my guesses are highback chub, rosyface chub, or whitemouth shiner?

So yellow grub flukes are kind of like black speck, then. Not attractive, but not a major worry in small numbers? Assuming of course there are no fish-eating birds in the domicile... As for what type of fish it is, I am guilty of not really thinking about it. He turned up in a known greenhead area, with other greenheads. Didn't look at him closely enough, assumed his different coloration was a byproduct of his parasites. Lesson learned. Pectoral fin count doesn't match highback, and whitemouth shiner is very out of range. Pelvic and dorsal fin counts match rosyface, and would be in range. That's a new one for me in that stream.

[mattknepley]

Don't blame you, Erica. But overall, I have not seen this, or black speck, develop in my tank yet. (And there is no shortage of snails in there.) Only in wild specimens.

An interesting note, however. The two streams in which I have seen fish with these conditions have had, by far, the lowest snail populations of any I have sampled more than once. I don't think I have ever seen a snail in the stream this fish was pulled from, and I've been sampling it at least once a month since late Feb / early March. Lots of corbicula, but no other mollusks... Christmas darters, tessies, and greenheads seem most prone to these afflictions from what I have seen. In the same water the above fish was pulled, I have found green and redbreast sunfish, creek and bluehead chubs, flat and yellow bullhead, northern hogsuckers, and some others. I don't recall these other fish showing this "nastiness". Is there a connection to near non-existent snail population and tessies? Are they wiping out the snails (yum) or somehow doing something else to increase their contact with them? Being benthic, that would make sense for the tessies, for greenheads not so much...

[littlen]

Sorry, Matt. I was being sarcastic! With that level of infection, there likely isn't a treatment available that could bring it back from the brink. As you see the fish doing in the pictures (sitting just under the surface), I imagine it would be doing the same in some slack water area of the stream. Thus making it very easy for a bird to nab and completing the lifecycle of the parasite.

[mattknepley]

I wondered about that after rereading this thread today. Call me naive, I guess...

Sorry, Matt. I was being sarcastic! With that level of infection, there likely isn't a treatment available that could bring it back from the brink. As you see the fish doing in the pictures (sitting just under the surface), I imagine it would be doing the same in some slack water area of the stream. Thus making it very easy for a bird to nab and completing the lifecycle of the parasite.

[littlen]

No worries. That's why we're all here! Although without actually knowing one another, it is hit or miss whether or not they'll get the joke. Irate's one liner would be appropriate, and truthful for that matter with this particular fish.