Angelfish with one bulging eye - pop eye??

[Guest14017]

Even if a fish is suspected to have Hexamita - you generally remove and treat THAT fish as soon as symptoms present themselves. You get as much mulm and organics out of the tank as possible but you don't hit the entire system with antibiotics. That is just not how Hexamita is usually treated. Hexamita is in most healthy systems, but it is opportunistic, generally only attacking weakened fish and not a threat for strong ones.

Hexamita is very rarely seen outside of cichlids anyway, so slamming the tank with antibiotics when there are tons of other species in the tank doesn't make sense to me from that standpoint either.

And the best form of treatment for Hexamita while the fish is still feeding is this:

Treating Hexamita aka Spironucleus

This treatment should work on all species of fish, marine, or fresh, as long as one is treating for hexamita/spironucleus.

www.monsterfishkeepers.com

LINK POSTED FOR THE PURPOSE OF DISEASE TREATMENT - PERIOD!

This should have been recommended when the user presented with the fish and she was still eating. Adding salt isn't going to help, and using metronidazole is okay once the fish is off its feed, but the user should have been informed that it will likely crash the cycle and to carefully manage and monitor his water and parameters.

This user has persistently high nitrates, which will predispose his fish to disease regardless, but this treatment plan had no chance of success as you cannot treat disease by crashing your cycle. But I suppose the point is moot now.

And I guess it's easy enough to just say - "Oh the fish were going to die anyway..."

 

[asifd]

Last update -

Hi All,

Thanks for your input Colin (helping me to stay calm during the nitrite spike) and MJ (helping me to re-evaluate my tank as a whole).

The tank is back to being fully cycled and the rest of the fish are doing ok. Changes I'm going to make to the tank / my routine are working towards a discus only tank with one type of small companion fish. Twice weekly water changes of 50% (one water change would involve cleaning gravel, the other water only). Just bought a pozanni filter to reduce nitrates in my water to below 20ppm. Removed all plant because never had luck with them and I think decaying leaves were adding to my nitrates.

Will not be using antibiotics in main tank anymore - instead salt, temp increases or epsom salts.

 

[asifd]

Pic of tank

 

[Colin_T]

Live aquatic plants don't cause nitrate problems. Excess food and lack of water changes will.

 

[Essjay]

Decomposing dead plants left in a tank will make ammonia though, which will be converted into nitrate.

Thriving live plants will help keep nitrate down.