Goldfish Disease: White Spot Disease on Goldfish
What is white spot disease
White spot disease is a type of goldfish disease that attacks goldfish. White spot is caused by a parasite "Ichthyophthirius multifiliis" or ich in short terms. Because the success key to eliminate the white spot is kill this parasite, then let's first understand the life cycle of this ich parasite.
Ich parasite causes white spot
At first, ich parasite associate themselves to the goldfish skin and begin to eat goldfish. Parasite will then self attaches to each other until after one or two days took place will look like a white spot on the goldfish body. After this stage, the parasite will begin to break away from the goldfish, and this is the time reproduction of parasite begins fastly. After releasing the self, parasites must attach themselves with goldfish within 24 hours, or the parasite will die. Each parasite that break away, contains approximately 500 new parasite. This is why, if not properly treated, white spot will actually kill goldfish. Due to eradicate this parasite can only be done in phase when parasite break down from goldfish or while swimming freely. For that do care within 10 days for eradicate all the parasites completely because all parasites are not swimming freely or break away at the same time.
Common symptoms
Well, what's your goldfish are already suffering white spot? then you need to know noticeable common symptoms, so that we can immediately possible to do the treatment before it is too late. Usually white spot occurs due to the poor condition of water in aquarium or a sudden cold conditions. Goldfish infected with white spot usually show signs like rapid breathing or scratch the body on gravel or other hard objects. If you see those behavior, take your goldfish to look closely if there are white spots like grains of salt on the body of goldfish. If it turns out goldfish infected, do treatment immediately.
