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Help! False Julii Cory has scratches

Looks to me that she has internal swelling, often called dropsy and it is affecting her swim bladder. The bleeding you are seeing is likely internal bleeding from the swelling. She is a bit bloated.

Problem is that dropsy is a symptom and can have many causes. I have seen it occur with internal bacterial infection (very difficult if not impossible to treat), parasites, internal tumors, and from ruptured internal organs (especially from eggbound females rupturing ovaries, have had a corydoras had this happen in the past. Bloated up really bad, bleeding under the skin and swim bladder struggles with it. Upon death, opened her up and her ovaries had burst and there were eggs everywhere in her body cavity where they shouldn't have been :( )

Unfortunately, many of these cases, there isn't a lot that can be done. This does not mean you can't try.

What I would suggest for this fish, is to remove her from the main tank and into a small tank just for her. Can even be a simple critter keeper type enclosure clipped to the inside of your tank so that the heater from the main tank keeps that warm for her without you needing to run extra equipment.


You need EPSOM salt in this situation, 1 tablespoon per 10 gallons for dosage. You can also choose to soak food in Epsom salt (100% magnesium sulfate btw, no added dyes, oils, or scents! Can buy from department stores or pharmacies in the bath section usually). Epsom salt helps reduce swelling and may give her a chance of recovering. Regular salt will not help her in this case as it won't reduce swelling like magnesium sulfate does.


You may also need to determine the cause of this dropsy, watch for signs of internal parasites in your other fish, test your water parameters and make sure your ammonia and nitrite are 0 and your nitrates are below 20ppm. If all checks out with observations over next while, you might be looking at an internal problem that's not caused by environmental or controllable factors.

If it is internal bacteria, you may notice some bacterial infections spreading to other fish, you will need to do a really good water change to reduce bacteria population, and try to treat with a strong antibiotic such as kanamycin, but even then it may not help with internal bacterial infections unfortunately.
 
Looks to me that she has internal swelling, often called dropsy and it is affecting her swim bladder. The bleeding you are seeing is likely internal bleeding from the swelling. She is a bit bloated.

Problem is that dropsy is a symptom and can have many causes. I have seen it occur with internal bacterial infection (very difficult if not impossible to treat), parasites, internal tumors, and from ruptured internal organs (especially from eggbound females rupturing ovaries, have had a corydoras had this happen in the past. Bloated up really bad, bleeding under the skin and swim bladder struggles with it. Upon death, opened her up and her ovaries had burst and there were eggs everywhere in her body cavity where they shouldn't have been :( )

Unfortunately, many of these cases, there isn't a lot that can be done. This does not mean you can't try.

What I would suggest for this fish, is to remove her from the main tank and into a small tank just for her. Can even be a simple critter keeper type enclosure clipped to the inside of your tank so that the heater from the main tank keeps that warm for her without you needing to run extra equipment.


You need EPSOM salt in this situation, 1 tablespoon per 10 gallons for dosage. You can also choose to soak food in Epsom salt (100% magnesium sulfate btw, no added dyes, oils, or scents! Can buy from department stores or pharmacies in the bath section usually). Epsom salt helps reduce swelling and may give her a chance of recovering. Regular salt will not help her in this case as it won't reduce swelling like magnesium sulfate does.


You may also need to determine the cause of this dropsy, watch for signs of internal parasites in your other fish, test your water parameters and make sure your ammonia and nitrite are 0 and your nitrates are below 20ppm. If all checks out with observations over next while, you might be looking at an internal problem that's not caused by environmental or controllable factors.

If it is internal bacteria, you may notice some bacterial infections spreading to other fish, you will need to do a really good water change to reduce bacteria population, and try to treat with a strong antibiotic such as kanamycin, but even then it may not help with internal bacterial infections unfortunately.
Thanks! I don’t have a second tank unfortunately. I do have a “birthing/fry container” that clips to the inside of the tank for live bearers but whatever treatment I put in that will seep into the main tank. Should I go the route of treating with an antibiotic? (But it would need to be shrimp friendly. I have anti-white spot and fungus treatment and anti-internal bacteria one from NTLabs). The latter I used to treat a betta a couple years ago which had dropsy
IMG_9390.jpeg
 
Try the internal antibacterial treatment, but I'd also utilize the Epsom salt with it. If the fry nursery lets out water, it will do you no good. That said, you can dose Epsom to the main tank as well at the same dosage rate of 1 tablespoon per 10 gallons. Dissolve it first in a cup of tank water before pouring it in.


What you are seeing as a scrape is internal, seeing the bleeding through the spaces in between the creases of body armor of the cory. I'll see if I can dig up my old photos of the one I lost to ovary rupture, she had similar symptoms.

Edit: Yeah not currently finding photos, might have been deleted out of my storage.
 
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Does the fish go to the surface a lot and gasp for air?
If yes, she might have air in her intestine, which is causing her to have buoyancy problems. Increasing aeration/ surface turbulence can increase the oxygen level in the water and reduce the need for the fish to go to the surface for air. This means there will be less air in its intestine and it should be able to swim more normally.

It could also have a problem in its brain and just has balance problems due to that. Infections in the brain are more common in dirty tanks, yours shouldn't be a problem. Physical damage to the brain can cause balance problems too.

Too much dry food can also cause problems because there is a bit of air in most dry food. Pellet and wafer foods are worse than flake. You can try feeding frozen or live food every day for a week and see if that helps. If it doesn't then there's an internal or brain problem.
 
Does the fish go to the surface a lot and gasp for air?
If yes, she might have air in her intestine, which is causing her to have buoyancy problems. Increasing aeration/ surface turbulence can increase the oxygen level in the water and reduce the need for the fish to go to the surface for air. This means there will be less air in its intestine and it should be able to swim more normally.

It could also have a problem in its brain and just has balance problems due to that. Infections in the brain are more common in dirty tanks, yours shouldn't be a problem. Physical damage to the brain can cause balance problems too.

Too much dry food can also cause problems because there is a bit of air in most dry food. Pellet and wafer foods are worse than flake. You can try feeding frozen or live food every day for a week and see if that helps. If it doesn't then there's an internal or brain problem.
Thanks, once or twice but not frequent trips to the top. I feed mostly catfish pellets, micro crumbs (because of the small tetras) and once every couple weeks frozen live food such as cyclops, bloodworm or daphnia).

I’m leaning towards putting in the internal bacteria treatment as a caution and adding some aquarium salt and then observing for a few days.

Water readings are consistent with previous ones:

pH - 7.5
NH3 - 0
NO2 - 0
NO3 - 0
KH - 8
GH - 13 (we live in a hardwater area)
 
I’ve now added salt.

How long should I leave it before my next water change? (I last did one on Saturday morning.)
 
Would you recommend I add another dose of the anti-internal bacteria treatment from NTLabs? It says it can be dosed every other day up to 4 applications.

The cory seems in much better spirits but still has a white patch on its head
 
If your fish already looks like it's going better, I would think something it eaten seriously made it bloat.

One of the picks shows a greatly compressed stomach / swim bladder area.

Teleost-fish-cross-section.jpg


That could have stretched the fish to the point of muscular damage an cause bleeding.

I'm not an illness specialist and can't exclude it. You haven't added anything that could contaminate your tank in a long enough period for me to think that. And if it was a bladder issue it would not correct itself quickly but a burst of gazes in the stomach can have severe consequence.

If that kind of thing occurs, my next troubleshooting steps are to take tank water put it in a flat container that I can see well inside. and dispose little sample of each food I use in distinctive area of the container and observe how it's going to turn in the next days.

And reject or start to use with caution anything that becomes full of fungus or gazes bubbles.
 
Do another dose.

Most catfish don't have swim bladders.
I literally looked in the aquarium 60 seconds ago and thought I’ll go on the forum and ask @Colin_T whether he thinks I should add another dose!

Much more active today and seems to be swimming better so I’ll add a second dose this morning. I also fed bloodworms the last 2 days for some variety from the pellets.
 

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