Suspected Fungus

[raney]

I bought an upside down catfish about a week ago, from a pretty good lfs (they're where I get a majority of my fish, so I trust their tanks for the most part.)

The first 4 days or so he was completely nocturnal, claimed my cave as his own. From what I read this was normal, so I didn't think much of it. After the 4th or 5th day he started coming out a bit more, now (7 or 8 days into his stay here) I haven't seen him in the cave at all lately.

I was watching him swim around today, and noticed an odd looking patch on his stomach, and at a closer look, I think it might be a fungus of some sort - its a greenish slimy patch, looks sort of like algae, but less thick, more ... mucus-y? I can see through it, I mean by this. But theres also a little bit more white-green looking spot of it on one of his fins. I read up a bit on it and couldn't find a standard treatment, so I'm looking for a bit of advice on 1) how to properly diagnose what it is, and 2) how to treat it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Lady Hobbs]

I had the same things happen with the featherfins I got. Probably is, they hide constantly so you don't see this stuff for awhile. I couldn't catch them and ended up treating my whole tank with fungal meds. Cleared it up but the problem with fungal meds is it messes with your biological factor in your tank. Not long but you do need to keep track of ammonia and nitrites readings again. Mine was fine after about 4 days.

If you are lucky enough to catch them and lucky enough to have a quarantine tank, this would be the way to go.

[raney]

Upon further observation, it looks like he floats to the top when he doesn't expend the effort to keep swimming downward. He was hanging out floating at the very surface for about an hour just now. Could it be something else, or would fungus do something like that?

I don't have a quarantine tank; are there any specific meds, or should I just grab something that says its for fungus, at Petsmart?

Thanks for the quick reply, hobbs.

[cocoa_pleco]

floating could mean bloat

[raney]

Well things went downhill fast, it was too late to get anything tonight, was looking for some advice on what to pick up for tomorrow, but... the catfish has been laying at the surface line for about 5 hours now, my other fish have been staring at him a bit, but his tail is still moving, and he'll swim away if startled enough.

Any last measures anyone would recommend? At this point I'm not really expecting him to be alive when I wake up.


Edit - he was dead this morning. I think it must've been some kind of fungus. Thanks for the replies.