# Whote Spots On Face And Eye



## sanderph

Hi,

I'm quite new to piranha's. If have a couple of Red Belly's in a tank and two of them have some white spots near their nose and on their eye.

Temperature of the water is ~ 28 degrees. I'm refreshing the water every 2-3 weeks and in between 1 or 2 partial (15-20%) refreshes.

I feed them fish, muscles and small shrimps.

Another remarkable thing; in the beginning my piranha's were swimming much faster and they were much more responsive. 
Now, it looks like they are a bit stoned.

I have them for about 3 months now and the symptoms I described are since the last two weeks or so.

Does anybody has experience with this?

Thanks!

Here I have a picture of my piranha.


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## Guest

Hi Sanderph,

I am not quite sure what is going on with your P's but have a few suggestions anyways. First of all you should be doing water changes weekly as well as fully vaccuuming your gravel with a gravel vac. I like to do 50% water changes weekly. What sized tank are your fish in and what are you using for a filter? Also, do you test your water parameters?


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## FEEFA

Let me see if I'm understanding you correctly, you change 100% of the water every 3 weeks and do 15-20% every week in between?
If so there is your problem. As Ksls suggested 50% weekly works great for me also, never change 100% of your water since its probably messing/killing your beneficial bacteria causing your tank to be in a constant state of recycling.


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## His Majesty

never do a 100% water change. as feefa said it kills all your good bacteria and your tank has to go through a mini cycle again. 50% water change is sufficient.

however im not sure what the white spots are or what they might be caused by


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## sanderph

Ok, thx for your replies, I will try it out, 50% per week or so. Any suggestion about the white spots?


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## memento

sanderph said:


> Ok, thx for your replies, I will try it out, 50% per week or so. Any suggestion about the white spots?


Not really... but you could check HERE if you find something that describes it.
How big is your tank and how often / how much do you feed them ?


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## Dr. Giggles

His Majesty said:


> never do a 100% water change. as feefa said it kills all your good bacteria and your tank has to go through a mini cycle again. 50% water change is sufficient.
> 
> however im not sure what the white spots are or what they might be caused by


No it don't. Nitrifying bacteria is not free floating in the water. I can only assume the white spot is from large pH fluctuations or simply just an injury.


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## Piranha_man

Just a personal suggestion...
You appear to be pretty new to fishkeeping... 
I would recommend doing no more than a 40% water change instead of a 50%.
That will give you just a little safer cushion in case your filter media is not in an ideal state for coping with the introduction of tapwater.


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## CLUSTER ONE

The white spot looks to be an injury and possibly the start of a fungus on a wound. The pictures arnt very good so i cant really say anythign for sure as the wound looks like a glare from a camera and blurry so you cant distincly make anything out. Like said there is no need to change 100% of the water. You shoudlnt mess up bacteria unless you arnt dechlorinating the water. IS you tank on a drip system of you just siphione alot of water every day? In most cases 30% or less will be fine, but the main decidign factor is your tank stocking, filtration and the tank size.

Also what is the tank size and do you have any driftwood pieces or rocks in the tank that they could of ran into?


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## sanderph

Hi folks,

Sorry for the late reply and thanks for all your answers.

I have tried the following:

1) Refresh 50% of the water every 3-4 days

2) Rinse my external Eheim filter. If will continue to do this once a month

Afterwards, they become much more healthy again; very responsive, no air grapsing 
anymore and they were eating their food like hungry predators again.
After a week, some P's were getting cloudy eyes and become slow again. I read on the forum that it might be caused by poluted water.
I have been told that a slight increase of the temperature and some salt will help.

3) I put some salt to the water (approx. 1/2 gram per 2-3 liters)

Result is that the cloudy eyes are disappearing slowly, but surely and they are in shape again.

So I will keep monitoring them closely and I hope it won't get worse again.

Any recommendations are welcome.


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