Help!

[miss_monie]

Hi!
My fish looks like he’s getting eaten, my husband says it’s rot. Do you guys have any idea what could be happening?

 

[Colin_T]

Bacterial infection. Use a broad spectrum fish medication (not antibiotics) that treats bacteria, fungus and external protozoans, and treat it asap for 1-2 weeks.

Before you treat the fish, do the following.

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Work out the volume of water in the tank:
measure length x width x height in cm.
divide by 1000.
= volume in litres.

There are 3.785 litres in a US Gallon
There are 4.5 litres in a UK gallon

When you measure the height, measure from the top of the substrate to the top of the water level.

If you have big rocks or driftwood in the tank, remove these before measuring the height of the water level so you get a more accurate water volume.

You can use a permanent marker to draw a line on the tank at the water level and put down how many litres are in the tank at that level.

There is a calculator/ converter in the "FishForum.net Calculator" under "Useful Links" at the bottom of this page that will let you convert litres to gallons if you need it.

Calculator

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Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge. This removes the biofilm on the glass and the biofilm will contain lots of harmful bacteria, fungus, protozoans and various other microscopic life forms.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate. The water change and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in. It also removes a lot of the gunk and this means any medication can work on treating the fish instead of being wasted killing the pathogens in the gunk.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use the media. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens so any medication (if needed) will work more effectively on the fish.

Remove carbon from the filter before treating with chemicals or it will adsorb the medication and stop it working.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration to maximise the dissolved oxygen in the water.

 

[miss_monie]

Thank you!! I will get right on it

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I am not so sure as Colin- the bump appears t show raised scales and it also appears that the gill flap is held open some. That could mean some form of parasite such as flukes etc. It is hard to tell from the picture so my opinion could be off the mark. Fluke should be visible using a magnifying glass.

Then there is the below:

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.

from https://animal-world.com/encyclo/fresh/information/Diseases.htm#Parasitic Diseases

Diagnosing remotely is sketchy at best unless the problem is obvious like Ich or long stingy white poop etc. High quality pictures help, but often behavior is a clue and that cannot be shown in a picture. Does the fish hide at all? Is it still eating? Is it rubbing (flashing) against things in the tank? Does it swim normally?

Finally, you are in the USA and here we can buy almost any fish medication we might want. This can lead to completely different results. One is it means we can get medications that can actually work. The other is we can get meds we think will work but are the wrong ones and they will not help and may actually do harm.

Unless a fish is approaching death and we cannot figure out what the cause is, we have no choice but to take our best shot and hope. Usually this is best done in a Hospital tank. However, if the problem is contagious, it becomes necessary to treat the entire tank.