Ever had a fish so seriously ill

[Bloo]

How many of you have had a fish, that for whatever reason, developed an illness or sustained an injury so bad, that you thought it was going to die ?

But with treatment and tlc, the fish pulled through continued to live a healthy life ?

Well I once had a Kuhli loach (actually he's still alive and kicking !) that got injured while I was doing a gravel vac
Poor chap looked like he broke his back and he couldn't swim at all. I did not have the guts to destroy him, so the next best option was to try and treat him. With a few weeks of isolation and bacterial meds (he had some light external injuries as well) he pulled through

Even though I'm always very cautious when doing a gravel vac, I've since been extra ultra cautious.

 

[Ethos]

I had a gourami that I found stuck to a filter. I absoulty filpped.

As fast as you could say mississippi I had my net out, and my hospital tank ready.
I put him in the hopital tank, and I put in 3 doses of stress coat.
Then I ran to my LFS and asked the 'fish expert' what to do.
She gave me some meds and then told me when, why and what order to put them in.
But since I hade put stress coat in, I had to wait 24 hours before the meds would affectivly work.

But he pulled through. Only to die of old age 3 month later

 

[rdd1952]

I found one of my serpae tetras floating on the top one morning just before I went to work. He was barely moving. He was in such bad shape that I simply scooped him up in my bare hand. Since he was still slightly alive, I didn't want to just finish him off but I wanted to get him out of the tank he was in so the other fish and shrimp wouldn't try to eat or nip at him once he was dead.

I took him and dropped him into one of the 2.5 gallon tanks that had just finished cycling. There was a very sizable difference in the pH between the 2 tanks but i didn't have time to acclimate him. The one he was coming out of was at about 6.6 while the one I put him into was about 7.2. He started flitting around very eratically, bumping into the walls, filter and plants. I guess it was from the pH shock. I knew he would be dead when I got home but there really wasn't anything I could do.

To my shock and amazement, when I got home, he was swimming around like nothing had ever happened. i left him in that tank for a couple days and then put him back in his regular tank. That was almost 2 months ago and he is still doing fine. I never figured out what caused his problem in the first place or how he managed to survive.

 

[SirMinion]

Cookie the Fahaka Pufferfish. An inch and a half of pure misery.
So starved that his skelleton was visible and his skin hung on him like a baggy sweater.
Fuzzy lumps of fungal growth on his back and tail.
Whitespot.
Torn, bitten fins and bites on his sides from fights with his tankmates.

Cookie's full story here.

.

 

[CFC]

My Pimelodus albofasciatus developed a condition where its body filled up with liquid and its guts started to be pushed out of its anus from the pressure inside. All the symptoms pointed toward kidney failure which is always 100% fatal in fish, but the fish was still swimming and eating so i wasnt prepared to euthanise a still happy fish and decided to have a go at a minor opperation to try and release the liquid inside.
I took the fish from the tank and placed it into a clean plastic cat litter tray with about 1/2" of tankwater in the bottom and covered the fishes head with a cloth soaked in tankwater to keep it calm, then using a sterilised sewing needle i made a small puncture in the fishes abdomen and gently squeezed the fishes sides which released about 50ml of a smelly yellow coloured liquid. A repeated this procedure twice more over the next two days until the fish was back down to its normal size and it guts started to go back into its body. The operation was a complete success and the fish is still with me now 2 years later.

 

[Synirr]

That's quite a story, CFC!!!

My senegal bichir somehow got a horrible cut on his face (it looked like he ran into the sharp side of a rock) and it was horrifically infected by the time I caught it because he always hid in his cave and I rarely saw him. He was miserable and not eating and his face looked so bad I was almost sure he was going to die, but after about a month and many many doses of meds he was perfectly healthy again
He's still with me today, even if one of his eyes is a little... wonky

 

[Maroonostrich]

This is years ago.. I think I was 12...

A fancy fantail goldfish I named Cherry lips- she had mouth markings like a lipstick mark on a white face!!!

She contracted fin rot. AND BAD. Soon enough the other goldfish were attacking her and nibbling away- initially I was treating her in the tank- soon realised she was seriously in trouble, and pulled her out.

She was a pitiful sight, within a couple of days the fin rot helped by the unwanted attention had destroyed her tail fin down to her BODY and she was just floating there in the water like a ball. I knew she was done for, but we put her in a second tank and added the fin rot medication- at a higher intensity then recommended. I can't remember what it was or anything, this was years ago. I'm ashamed to say I could not bring myself to kill her though perhaps I really should have, and hoped the medicine would do the trick- Kill or cure I guess.

Incredibly, she hung on, and then her fins were no longer red.. and then she was eating, though her swimming was pretty laughable if you wanted to be cruel about it.. and then her tail was beginning to GROW BACK, I swear!

It took weeks if memory serves, a long rehab period in a tiny tank.. but she got better and rejoined the others- it was INCREDIBLE.

Never had another salvaged like that. Tragically I lost her and all my other goldfish following a tank move, which I now realise must have screwed up the water chemistry.

It was a sad, sad day.

 

[glolite]

One of my first leopard dannios started swimming nose-down and flicking. It was when I started my first tank and not having joined this forum I was ignorant about fishless cycling so he obviously got poisoned by Nitrites/ammonia. Thanks to the people here and after countless water changes, melafix and saline baths he pulled through and I still have him today.

 

[One_Trick_Pony]

good on u guys!!! mercifully i have not had any truel poorly fis yet, but have just maged to get on top of a small outbreak of ich

 

[debiasir]

my fancy tailed goldfish (called Del Boy) had bad fin rot and various pin hols in his tail. After a few meds and loads of TLC and treats to cheer him up he pulled through. and is now very healthy and loving life

 

[hellohefalump]

CFC, how did you do that?!? wow... how did know you weren't puncturing an organ or something? Or was that a considered risk?

Last July all my four goldfish got Fish Tuberculosis from a contaminated food block. They were all looking pretty bad and steadily declining. I caught it in the first day the symptoms started showing. I put them in a salt and melafix solution, isolating the worst two. Overnight one died, and the two left in the main tank were looking as bad as the one left that had been swimming in the 'death water'. So I put him back in the main tank. All three steadily got worse, one died (my fav 17year old fishy i'd had since I was two years old). I expected them all to die - they were all looking so ill. Their gills had become bloodshot, they had cloudy eyes, no energy etc. I kept the water parameters perfect and after four days, the remaining two miraculously started getting better. I still have them both now.

 

[squirrelrabbits]

I had an elephant nose that jumped from his tank the night I brought him home from the fish store. I found him on the floor, seemingly dead, and was about to take him to the trash when something possessed me to put him in a bowl of tank water. He revived and lives to tell the tale today--the most active and delightful fish in my 75 gallon. And this after the LFS warned me not to quarantine him because he was too delicate to be moved twice in such a short period!

 

[Sky042]

Guess I'll have to let you know.
My oscar this morning I came home and I found him barely breathing white cloudy stuff on his eyes and his fins are all ragged.

It's weird though it happened litterally overnight. I left for work he was fine I came home 14 hours later and he looks like he's on his last leg.

 

[Paul_MTS]

I bought a few knight gobies a while back and had to sit them in a bucket for them to aclimatise. when I wasn't looking 1 of them had jumped out. i didn't notice until I went to the put the other gobies in the tank, so had a search around the tank and there was 1 manky looking knight goby. I plopped him back into the tank and he just swam off!!

we have a indistrutable albino tiger barb at work at the moment, he's had dropsy, pop eye, internal bleeding, bacterial infection and whitespot yet at the moment he's swimming around happy as can be normal as the next tiger barb!

 

[Miss Dib Dabs]

I have one sad fish in the tank currently caused by one other of the same breed picking on him. The colour on his top fin is dull compared to the other two and he's smaller then them both. And yet when I put in food he's always there feeding like a good 'un. You think a buddy would help?
Hugs,
P.