Angel With Popeye

[nick.darke]

Hi all, new here, but I hope someone can provide some guidance. I have a young (less than a year old) angelfish who appears to have popeye, but I've never come across this particular sort of problem - Basically, the right eye is being pushed forward and outward by some sort of transparent growth behind the eye. More worryingly (as if this isn't bad enough) the growth may be being caused by a white worm which I think I can see inside the growth (it's transparent see). I've not seen this 'worm' move but whatever it is is obviously causing a problem.
 
Unfortunately I'm not able to quarantine this fish as i have no other facilities and worse yet the tank contains a number of loaches which I understand are notoriously intolerant of medication. So. any ideas?
 
For the record, the tank is a Juwel Rio 120, planted and pretty clean. I do a 10% water change fortnightly and ammonia and nitrite are zero with nitrate levels the same as our tap water (west midlands). pH is 7.
 
N

 

[BerryAttack]

place in bucket and treat with methylene blue, for around a week. every third day to a 50 % water change (have bubblier in there to keep oxygen up and circluating) 
methylene blue will treat everything that the fish might have. just make sure that before you do a water change allow the fish to eat high protein rich foods. and when everything seems all good, leave for another week with the meds to make 100% sure, then do 75% water change in bucket, and allow the water from your tank to drip into the bucket. when the water is the same temp in the bucket you can put the fish back in.
 
oh and make sure you are treating the tap water.. if you aren't.

 

[nick.darke]

hmm, OK. Do i need to do anything to heat the water in the bucket? (the house is centrally heated)
 
I have a deep, clean plasterers bucket (never been used) would that be suitable? Bearing in mind that the fish is probably 6 or 7 inches deep (including fins) although the body is perhaps 2" deep - It's one of the long-finned varieties.

 

[nick.darke]

Have 'bitten the bullet' and bought a small tank setup on the way home from work. Will be hospitalising the angel later on (need to get tankette set up first). Hopefully this will do the trick. Have also bought some plastic plants so it's got a bit of cover. Fingers crossed.
 
N

 

[nick.darke]

So two days in and things are changing. What I thought was a worm turned out to be fungus but the Meth. Blue looks to be starting to get that under control so am a little more hopeful now.

 

[nick.darke]

Four days now and the area affected by the fungus and the swelling is definitely shrinking. Will continue treatment until all symptoms are cleared though.

 

[nick.darke]

Sadly the fish developed a more serious case of popeye in the other eye so given that the meth blue was no longer improving the situation and the fish had stopped eating or indeed moving about much, the decision was taken this evening to euthanase it. Sad but I felt we had run out of alternatives. Thanks for the advice though.

 

[goldfish98]

Aw, poor thing.