The cotton balls you are talking about usualy isn't described for describing ick.
Ick will look like small grains of salt covering the fishes body.
I've never read or heard anything about a disease with that description of what you gave.
Some pictures would defintely help out alot. And what are your water parameters?
http://www.fishforums.com/forum/dise...ase-sites.html
oh and I imigine that this will be getting moved to the disease forum.