Help! I don’t know if my fish is sick

JuiceBox52 said:

I cant tell. What are its symptoms?

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Njuarez said:

He has the stringy poop, I don’t know if it looks normal, also his fin on his right side is missing the bottom half, I don’t know if it was because of fin nipping or if it’s fin rot, sorry it’s hard to take pictures my fish move too much lol

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Colin_T said:

The fish doesn't have bloat but it does have excess mucous on its pectoral (side) fins and it has some damage to its pectoral fins.

What is the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate of the water?

What is the GH (general hardness), KH (carbonate hardness) and pH of your water supply?
This information can usually be obtained from your water supply company's website or by telephoning them. If they can't help you, take a glass full of tap water to the local pet shop and get them to test it for you. Write the results down (in numbers) when they do the tests. And ask them what the results are in (eg: ppm, dGH, or something else).

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The fish is a Haplochromis venustus or livingstoni and comes from Lake Malawi in Africa. It requires water with a GH above 300ppm and a pH above 7.6.

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Colin_T said:

The fish doesn't have bloat but it does have excess mucous on its pectoral (side) fins and it has some damage to its pectoral fins.

What is the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate of the water?

What is the GH (general hardness), KH (carbonate hardness) and pH of your water supply?
This information can usually be obtained from your water supply company's website or by telephoning them. If they can't help you, take a glass full of tap water to the local pet shop and get them to test it for you. Write the results down (in numbers) when they do the tests. And ask them what the results are in (eg: ppm, dGH, or something else).

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The fish is a Haplochromis venustus or livingstoni and comes from Lake Malawi in Africa. It requires water with a GH above 300ppm and a pH above 7.6.

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Colin_T said:

It could be fin rot but could be a bite from another fish. The excess mucous is from the fish trying to protect the wound. It's not likely to be contagious like a disease but is an indication something is not right in the tank, and other fish can develop the same symptoms if conditions are not fixed.

Fin rot is caused by a dirty tank and lack of water changes and gravel cleaning. The easiest way to treat this is by doing a 75% water change and gravel cleaning the tank every day for 2 weeks.

Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. Wash filter media/ materials in a bucket of tank water and re-use the media. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn.

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You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), sea salt or swimming pool salt to the aquarium at the dose rate of 2 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres (5 gallons) of water.

If you only have livebearers (guppies, platies, swordtails, mollies), goldfish or rainbowfish in the tank you can double that dose rate, so you would add 4 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, gouramis, loaches) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers, rainbowfish or other salt tolerant species.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria but the higher dose rate will affect some plants. The lower dose rate will not affect plants.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week using only fresh water that has been dechlorinated. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that. This dilutes the salt out of the tank slowly so it doesn't harm the fish.

If you do water changes while using salt, you need to treat the new water with salt before adding it to the tank. This will keep the salt level stable in the tank and minimise stress on the fish.

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Metalhead88 said:

Looks more like hes been nipped at than fin rot. What else is in the tank and what size tank is it. As previously mentioned we need to start with water conditions.

Poo looks normal to me.

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Colin_T said:

The excess mucous is at least partially caused by the ammonia and nitrite in the water.
Big daily water changes will help with that.

How long has the tank been set up for?
How often and how do you clean the filter?
Can you post pictures of the other cichlids?

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