DoubleDutch
Fish Gatherer
Sorry to hear !
from http/animal-world.com/encyclo/fresh/information/Diseases.htm#Dropsy
Dropsy
Symptoms: Bloating of the body, protruding scales.
Dropsy is caused from a bacterial infection of the kidneys, causing fluid accumulation or renal failure. The fluids in the body build up and cause the fish to bloat up and the scales to protrude. It appears to only cause trouble in weakened fish and possibly from unkempt aquarium conditions.
An effective treatment is to add an antibiotic to the food. With flake food, use about 1% of antibiotic and carefully mix it in. If you keep the fish hungry they should eagerly eat the mixture before the antibiotic dissipates. Antibiotics usually come in 250 mg capsules. If added to 25 grams of flake food, one capsule should be enough to treat dozens of fish. A good antibiotic is chloromycetin (chloramphenicol). Or use tetracycline. If you feed your fish frozen foods or chopped foods, try to use the same ratio with mixing. As a last resort add at most 10 mg per liter of water. Also, if unkempt conditions are the suspected cause, correct it.
Scale Protrusion
Symptoms: Protruding scales without body bloat.
Scale protrusion is essentially a bacterial infection of the scales and/or body. A variety of bacterium could be the culprit here, as can unkempt aquarium conditions.
An effective treatment is to add an antibiotic to the food. With flake food, use about 1% of antibiotic and carefully mix it in. If you keep the fish hungry they should eagerly eat the mixture before the antibiotic dissipates. Antibiotics usually come in 250 mg capsules. If added to 25 grams of flake food, one capsule should be enough to treat dozens of fish. A good antibiotic is chloromycetin (chloramphenicol). Or use tetracycline. If you feed your fish frozen foods or chopped foods, try to use the same ratio with mixing. As a last resort add at most 10 mg per liter of water. Also, if unkempt conditions are the suspected cause, correct it.
Colonel Dibble said:Well, the fish can naturally get bloat if they have some kind of organ failure or something inside them that is just defective. The thing with CPD's are there small body size.
They need to be fed small pellets or crushed flake to avoid getting bloat (Dropsy)
DoubleDutch said:Dropsy and bloat are two different things. Dropsy is a organ-failure (mainly kidneys) by a bacterial or viral infection. Fluid will build up in the fish. Bloating can be caused by a wrong diet and is air , fluid by constipation (english???) in it's intestials. This one can be cured by feeding another diet / peas aso. This is Dropsy to me and uncurable to my believe.
Hahaha that was what I thought. In Holland we only have one name for this. At another forum some people explained the differences between the two. And i have to say : sounded right !!!! Both are not a real disease but symptoms (in both cases the fish are bloating). It's called Dropsy when it is caused by an organ failure. If that isn't the case though then it's "only" called bloating. Often an wrong diet (too much vegs for carnivores, too much protein for herbivores for instance) can cause this. Visible symptoms indeed are alike !!!Colonel Dibble said:Well, the fish can naturally get bloat if they have some kind of organ failure or something inside them that is just defective. The thing with CPD's are there small body size.
They need to be fed small pellets or crushed flake to avoid getting bloat (Dropsy)
Or it could just happen naturally.
DoubleDutch said:Dropsy and bloat are two different things. Dropsy is a organ-failure (mainly kidneys) by a bacterial or viral infection. Fluid will build up in the fish. Bloating can be caused by a wrong diet and is air , fluid by constipation (english???) in it's intestials. This one can be cured by feeding another diet / peas aso. This is Dropsy to me and uncurable to my believe.
Bloat comes first then turns into Dropsy. They are basically the same.
Edit: they are the same thing. http/www.fish-disease.net/diseases/dropsy.php