Gas Bubble Danio!

Colin_T said:

*Any chance of a picture and short 30 second video of the fish?
- I'll try!
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*What symptoms are the fish showing?
- Fish currently looks happy, not distressed. Able to move freely around the tank, not struggling for buoyancy. It has what looks like a hole at it's rear end, it turns out to be a bubble pocket inside the fish.

*How long has the tank been set up for?
*How long have you had the fish for?

The tank belonged to a friend, he had it for a year before giving it to me in February because he was moving away. The Danio was the only fish it came with. It had a fine gravel substrate and all plastic decoration. There was too much decoration to my eye, so after I removed a good portion it gave the Danio (George ) room to swim and he seemed happy.
He didn't give me anything else with the tank except tropical fish flakes. It included a bag of carbon filter, my friend didn't have any more of that.


*How often do you do water changes and how much do you change?
- I change the water approximately every 2 wks. Purchased carbon which I change every 8wks.
The tank is 39L and I change approximately 5L at a time.
As I am medicating the fish at the moment I'm changing the 5L every 4 days to add a dose of swimbladder medicine to the tank (16 day treatment).

*Do you gravel clean the tank when you do a water change?
- Normally, yes. But not at the moment with the medication. I bought a gravel cleaner gadget but I'm not confident with it's efficacy and woukd be grateful for advice.

*Do you dechlorinate the new water before adding it to the tank?
- Yes, I only started doing this last month.
I didn't know I had to do this. My friend told me to sit a bucket of water out for ages to allow the chlorine to dissipate before adding to the tank. I was buying new fish so made sure I had the dechlorinater for this transition.

*What is the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH and GH of the tank water?
- I've only tested the water once, didn't realise you could buy a kit. Once fish were settled I took a reading:
pH - 7.6
High Range - 7.4
Ammonia (NH3/NH4) - 0.50
Nitrate - No2 - 0
Nitrate - No3 - 10 or 20

I'll test it again after the last course kf swimbladder medication is complete


* What sort of filter do you have?
- Carbon

* How often and how do you clean the filter?
- Oh! You mean the actual filter? I'm not sure how to describe it but I clean that every 2wks, I rarely have any build up of algae in it.

* Have you added anything new (fish, plants, wood, etc) to the tank in the 2 weeks before this started?

- No, George kept floating to the top of the tank in July, he was trying to swim down but kept rushing back up. I didn't know what was wrong, changed the water etc. I kept an eye on him and lessened thr amount of food I gave him. Over a period of a few days he went back to normal. The whole of him looked inflated during this episode. Since then, he has had a bulge on his left side, I thought at times he was going to burst!
I did the same, changed water and cleaned substrate, he went back to normal for a few weeks. That's when I thought it would be okay to introduce new fish in August.
Unfortunately hours before they arrived, he started developing this bulge again. I was panicked thinking it would spread to the new fish.
The next day was when the bubble started to look like a proper hole. I thought the new fish had attacked him but thankfully it was just a bubble. I'm assuming it was the swimbladder region because when he needed to go to the toilet, you could see a line appear in the bubble which I realised was his poo. I was worried it might have been his guts moving around but knce he passed a poo, the area was clear again.
I started swimbladder medication but I'm not sure if it's working.


* Do you add plant fertilisers, supplements or anything else to the tank?
- Yes but these were added after he became unwell.

*Are there any other fishes in the tank?
- Yes, I've since added 4x Leopard Danios (not longfin variety), 5x pygmy corydoras, 1x bronze corydora
I've had them for over 2 wks and none are affected by this thing that George has.

* What medication did you use to try and treat the fish?
- I only use swimbladder treatment which doesn't seem to be doing anything.

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