My cory catfish died.. worried about other fish

[Artuk]

Hi,

The other day we lost our cory catfish. It had a large discolored lumpy area on one side. There was some sort of red infected area visible inside him. His symptoms seemed to match those of Dropsy, although we could see no visible reason. He was showing a lot less activity then usual. He didnt display any of the scraping on rocks that parasites are said to make fish do.

View of red spot and discoloration

View angle shows lumpiness

We think the most likely cause was that he injured himself on something in the tank and subsequently the injury got infected resulting in dropsy, but we did see something that looked worm like. It was like a white thread moving through the tank. My gf thinks it was moving on its own, I am not as sure but she could be right. It had no anchor like head to make me think it was anchor worm. It looked just like a white thread about a half inch long.

We are concerned about the health of our other fish. Since this happened, the usually active leapord cory catfish has been less active and we are concerned there is something going through our tank.

Does anyone have any thoughts about what we should do, and what our next step should be?

Regards,

Artuk

 

[tstenback]

Could have been anchor worm as they quite often cause a red patch as seen on the cory but i have not seen them leave such a large lump. Might have been flesh worm same type thing but a much bigger lump. Here is a link to some diseases where you can see if either of these match what your cory had. If you find out what it was you may have to treat the tank if it is contagoius. HTH

 

[Artuk]

Thanks. The other Cory really didnt seem well, but since they are social fish we decided to take a change and get another one. As soon as we added the second one to the tank he perked right up. It was really pretty dramatic. I guess he was just lonely.

Anyhow.. still no idea what happened to the first one, but we are leaning toward a wound that got infected. Not sure how that could happen, but if we had parasites we reason they would have reappeared on another fish.

Thanks again for the help! That link was good reading.

Regards,

Artuk