Help - fin rot and white stringy poo

[Alessandra525]

Hi all, I'm panicking because I don't want to lose my poorly fish.

History:

8 days ago I noticed my endler guppy had a shredded tail, with white end (you can see him in the pic). Did some research and shown various pictures to LFS and the outcome was it could be fin rot. I isolated him in a QT (not cycled) and started treating him with king British disease clear. After 3 days of treatment I could not see any improvement. So I went to another fish store and they gave me esha2000 for fungus, fin rot and bacterial treatment. This med contains copper, but in the leaflet it says it should be safe. I'm at the third day of dosage and my endler seems less active (maybe due to copper?). Yesterday i further noticed a white stringy poop coming from him (same today, you can see on picture). I did some research and it says it could be internal parassite or constipation.

Current situation:

I'm going to feed him a pea today for constipation. I can not add any other medicine for parassite today with Esha2000 treatment going on AND my ammonia level is between 0.25 and 0.5 (obviously, because the tank was not cycled - stupid me). But if I do a water change I will take away the medicine.

Questions:

What do I do now? What are the next steps?

I am supposed to go on holiday this Friday and I don't have a second automatic feeder for my QT. I am worried about putting him back in my display tank, as he might be contagious, but I can't leave him in the QT, as he can not be fed there.

Please help, I really want to save this little one.

 

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Finrot is normally caused by poor water quality with ammonia and nitrite being the most common cause. The ammonia and nitrite damage the mucous coating on the fish and allow bacteria and fungus to get in. Normally doing big 75% water changes each day for a week or two will fix the problem without the need for medication.

If you have an ammonia reading you should do a big 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate, then retreat the new water when it is added to the tank.
eg: You take out 20 litres of water, then make up 20 litres of new water and dechlorinate it. You add the new water to the tank and add enough medication for the 20 litres of new water.

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If the fish had issues in the main tank, then any diseases it has are already in the other tank.

If the fish is still eating, then the stringy white poop is probably caused by intestinal worms and they are not a major issue. Tapeworms can be treated with Praziquantel. Thread/ round worms can be treated with Levamisole.

If the fish stops eating and gets fat over night and does stringy white poop, then it is an internal bacterial infection.
Most internal bacterial infections cannot be treated and the fish usually dies within 24 hours of showing these symptoms.

If the fish stops eating, loses weight rapidly over a few days to a week, and does stringy white poop, then it is usually an internal protozoan infection.
Internal protozoan infections can be treated with Metronidazole, but this should be used with care and only as a last resort because it kills filter bacteria and was designed for people, not fish.

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If you are going away for a few days to a week, I would not bother feeding the fish. The fish can go for weeks or even months without food because they don't need to eat to stay warm. The food fish eat is used for moving and growing.

Do daily water changes until you go away.
Add some plants to the tank.
Don't bother feeding if you are only going for a few days. If you are going for a couple of weeks, measure out a couple of serves of food and put them in containers. And get someone to add the food once a week. But only put a single feeding into each container.

More fish die from over feeding than starvation.