Blind gold Gourami

[Brinn2397]

A couple of weeks ago I noticed my Gouramis coloring get progressively darker. I thought it was because he was getting older. Then I noticed he was swimming aimlessly bumping into the decorations also when I put flake food in the tank He would swim right past the food. I looked closer at him and saw that one of his eyes is completely cloudy and the other has a small white dot in the center. I thought I had parasites but I found they were Detritus worms. I’m struggling getting rid of hair algae as well, but I don’t think that’s the cause.

 

[Colin_T]

Any chance of a picture and short 20 second video of the fish?

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When fish go dark during the day, they are stressed by something in the water.

Cloudy eyes are normally caused by poor water quality and a dirty environment.

Test your water quality for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate & pH and post the results (in numbers) here.

Then do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate. Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it unless the water flow is weak. Wash filter materials in a bucket of tank water.

 

[Brinn2397]

I changed my filter media a little over a week ago. After I found worms I’ve been doing religious water/ gravel vacs. I would really clean the gravel good and the next day I’d notice a lot of way too much poop for doing a cleaning the day prior. I have a 40 gallon my angel fish and gourami are the biggest (about 3-3 1/2 in) 2 Cory cats, 2 guppies, 2 plecos, 1 red tailed shark and 1 angel ram( each one is no bigger than 2 1/2 inches) 1 shrimp and 3 nerite snails. (I don’t know if this info is useful)

The water reads 0 nitrite, 5-10 ppm nitrate, 0 ammonia.
I tried time after time to reduce the nitrate but I’ve had no luck, I tested my tap water and found that it was high in nitrate

If these pictures don’t help I can try to get another

 

[Colin_T]

The white spot on the eye is excess mucous. The eye has been injured and the mucous is protecting the damaged area. Regular daily water changes and gravel cleaning should help the eye to heal without medication.

The fish is darker than normal and its tail is drooping.

If the fish is 3 inches long then its a female. The males have a long pointed dorsal (top) fin, whereas the females have a shorter rounded dorsal fin.

Are you treating the hair algae with anything?
If yes, you might be overdosing and poisoning the fish.

 

[Brinn2397]

Okay gourami is definitely a female. I’ll give that a try and see where it goes. I’m not treating the algae with chemicals, I’m manually removing it and I recently got moss balls to see if that helps.

 

[FishGuest5123]

Colin took the words out of my mouth regarding cloudiness. I agree with him that it is due to an injury and should clear up with clean water. Good luck!