Keyhole Cichlid In Trouble

[tidyshow]

over the last 2 days my keyhole has swollen a lot and is now sitting on the bottom of the tank and
the other fish are circling it.
what can i do to help before it dies as he is a very likable fish.
his breathing is very laboured also

 

[bubblehead]

hi tidy do you have a spare tank/hospital tank ? if so id remover this fish to that for treatment

do you have a pic of the fish i think that your key hloe may have dropsy

here is a link with some info for you

dropsy

 

[tidyshow]

no, the only other tanks i have, have either malawis or betta splendens

looks like dropsy to me, and i have nowhere to put him away from other fish

 

[bubblehead]

dropsey advice and poss cure

hi tidy yup thats dropsy unfortunaly when it gets to this stage its very very unlikly fish will recover as internal organs are affected im sorry but fingers crossed for you



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.


Article by Keith Pardee

 

[tidyshow]

tbh i think its only a matter of time.
pity as he was one of my favourites too.

 

[bubblehead]

tbh i think its only a matter of time.
pity as he was one of my favourites too.

i like key holes myself what other fish you got

 

[Corleone]

With scales sticking out like that, they usually don't make it.

Marvelous fish. I'd be gutted if one of mine died - they're so hard around here.

 

[tidyshow]

i have a varied community where everyone gets on !!
i have 2 banded gara flavatra, a black ghost knife fish, green severum, very large angel,
3 spot and red indian gourami, hoplo cats, pimpictus, choclate talking catfish, royal plec,
various cory doras, bolivian rams, blue acara and a few more.

 

[Davo86]

what are the water parameters?
what do you feed them? is it mainly dried foods?
try to increase the aeration in the tank

try to see if the keyhole will take some deshelled peas

 

[tidyshow]

water parameters ??
food is tetra pro colour, loads of aeration in the tank ( 2 x 12" air stones each with a dedicated air pump)

 

[Davo86]

water parameters, i.e ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, ph etc. do you have a test kit?

dropsy ia a bacterial condition usually caused by bad water quality, if waters fine then it could well just be bloat, which is very often caused by feeding lots of dried foods, i..e. Flake or similar.

 

[ReMz]

You should get a water test kit and get back to us with the ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate.

Unfortunately that is dropsy. certainly not standard bloating. like others have said, recovery is not likely that far into it. It's a nasty disease. If the fish cannot swim or react in any way, you may want to consider putting it down. One of my main reasons for saying this is because you cannot separate him and get him into a quarantine tank. You don't want your other fish to go downhill as well.

 

[tidyshow]

the water is fine, NO3 is slightly elevated but within acceptable limits,
everything else is fine.