Dwarf Gourami injured

Looking for a bit of advice please folks... We've got a small community tank and added 3 dwarf gouramis a couple of weeks back. Today I found one of them stuck in a volcano decoration at the bottom of the tank. The fish was thrashing about and was stuck pretty tight. Tried to assist the fish out but ended up having to take a pair of pliers to dismantle the decoration to free the fish.

The fish looks to have sustained a fair bit of damage - pictures below. I've got it isolated in a seperate small tank. Wondering what to do now:
- keep it in a seperate tank for recovery or add back into main tank?
- does it need medication?
- is it likely to survive?
Any advice is much appreciated.
Thanks
Andy

Keep it separate for a few weeks and monitor it for bacterial and fungal infections. Bacterial infections will look red and inflamed. Fungal infections usually go white and fluffy. This is most likely to happen in the next few days.

You can reduce the chance of infection by wiping the inside of the tank down and doing a huge (75-80%) water change and gravel clean every day for 2 weeks.

You can also add some rock salt. See directions below.

--------------------
SALT
You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt) or swimming pool salt to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 or 2 heaped tablespoons per 20 litres of water. Start with 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres now, and if it looks like the wounds are getting infected, increase the dose to 2 heaped tablespoons of salt 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, Bettas & 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, fish, plants, shrimp or snails.

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.

When 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.

Thanks Colin

AM2587 said:

added 3 dwarf gouramis

Click to expand...

Hi
By dwarf gouramis you mean Trichogaster lalius I guess ?
Is it a male and 2 females ?