Can anyone tell me why my gourami is blind?

[Brinn2397]

About A month ago I noticed my goal gourami swimming into decorations and swimming pass the food I put in the tank. Since then her right eye progressively got cloudier and her left eye has just started to get cloudy. I cleaned the tank daily for a couple of weeks in hopes that it was just an injury. No luck. I tried aquarium salt for a few days, still no luck. I clean the tank out for a couple days again then tried API general cure, unfortunately I had no luck. I don’t think I can help her out at this point, Id just like to know what caused this.

A little background.... I have worms in the tank that I found to be detritus worms also my nitrates are always around 20-40 ppm due to high nitrates in my tap water, absolutely nothing I do works for the nitrates, all of the other parameters are normal

 

[Colin_T]

Is the white bit in the eye itself or on the outside of the eyeball?

If it's in the black part of the eye, then it has a cataract and there's nothing you can do for it.

If the fish is old then cataracts do sometimes appear and cause them to go blind. Most fish adapt to it and if you tap the water surface with your finger before feeding the fish, they go up to the surface and start looking for food.

If the fish is young then it might have been damaged and never healed properly, or the fish just has bad eyes (genetic defect).

 

[Brinn2397]

At first it looked like it was on the outside but now the white looks like it’s inside of the black part of her eye. The other side looks like a little white haze on the outermost part of her eye but she acts like she still can’t see. After all of this I’m figuring that it’s genetics or a cararact. Thank you for your response