Please help! Open wounds blue gourami

Loroll1991 · Oct 17, 2020

Please help

Can anyone advise on what is wrong with my blue gourami and how to treat him? He is roughly 6 years old

Regular water changes have been done, no other fish have this issue and salt & disease clear have been added to the tank but he’s getting worse

AdoraBelle Dearheart · Oct 17, 2020

Yikes! Something is eating away at the poor things flesh

I'd suspect bacteria, but I really don't know, hopefully @Colin_T can give you some better advice.

If not, I would try a different anti-bacterial medicine. Anti bacterials are hard to get in the UK, but I've used eSHa 2000 and found it worked for my issue. It could be that the ingredient in the King British med doesn't treat the type of bacteria your fish is infected with, if it is bacterial.

I hate to say this, but he's in a bad way. You may have to consider euthanising him. Those are huge wounds, and imaging that kind of size wound, that deep, in my own body... you don't want him to suffer, and it might have come to that point. How is his activity/eating etc?

Loroll1991 · Oct 17, 2020

AdoraBelle Dearheart said:
Yikes! Something is eating away at the poor things flesh
I'd suspect bacteria, but I really don't know, hopefully @Colin_T can give you some better advice.

If not, I would try a different anti-bacterial medicine. Anti bacterials are hard to get in the UK, but I've used eSHa 2000 and found it worked for my issue. It could be that the ingredient in the King British med doesn't treat the type of bacteria your fish is infected with, if it is bacterial.

I hate to say this, but he's in a bad way. You may have to consider euthanising him. Those are huge wounds, and imaging that kind of size wound, that deep, in my own body... you don't want him to suffer, and it might have come to that point. How is his activity/eating etc?

Thank you for the reply

. The strange thing is he seems to be eating fine and given the state of the poor thing he’s really quite active! Still swimming around and eating as soon as we put food in. We were thinking It may have been another fish attacking him but haven’t seen anything. We do not have a segregation tank so cannot even move him, we’ve tried to put lots of hiding spots in.

Me and my husband have said it is probably very unfair to keep him alive, however he was literally our first fish nearly 6 years ago and I feel absolutely distraught for him to go that way so really wanted to try and make him better

of course if he does not get better or seems to be suffering, we will have to do it.

Freddo96 · Oct 18, 2020

What other fish are in the aquarium? It could be he caught on something and the wound has got worse through bacteria I had the same looking wounds on a loach and found api melofix to work very quick

itiwhetu · Oct 18, 2020

That is an old age gourami. Maybe it is just coming to the end of it's life.

Loroll1991 · Oct 18, 2020

Freddo96 said:
What other fish are in the aquarium? It could be he caught on something and the wound has got worse through bacteria I had the same looking wounds on a loach and found api melofix to work very quick

We have a few fish but none are new, they’ve all been in there for some time (240l tank). Did you isolate your loach when treating with api melofix? We unfortunately do not have a segregation tank and do not want to risk doing any damage to any other fish with medicines

Loroll1991 · Oct 18, 2020

itiwhetu said:
That is an old age gourami. Maybe it is just coming to the end of it's life.

I have a feeling this could be it, I feel very attached to this one and the one we got at the same time (they’re extremely dosile and not aggressive like blue gourami are known to be). It just isn’t how I imagined either of them going

Freddo96 · Oct 18, 2020

I didn't isolate the fish but I did add and extra airstone as most medicines are known for taking the oxygen out if you was anywhere in Lancashire I have a spare treatment tank

Colin_T · Oct 18, 2020

bad bacterial infection that will probably need anti-biotics, but it probably isn't worth it financially.

Essjay · Oct 18, 2020

Melafix shouldn't really be used in a tank with labyrinth fish. It contains melaleuca oil which can interfere with the labyrinth organ. It is also a very mild antiseptic and probably won't do much for such a horrible infection

Freddo96 · Oct 18, 2020

⁴

essjay said:
Melafix shouldn't really be used in a tank with labyrinth fish. It contains melaleuca oil which can interfere with the labyrinth organ. It is also a very mild antiseptic and probably won't do much for such a horrible infection

I had two dwarfs in the tank at the time I medicated the loach and both are happy

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