Poorly Bronze Cory

[adcs]

I have a Bronze Cory who's a bit poorly. I bought him around 8 months ago along with his friend to keep my two Peppered Corys company.

When I bought him he looked a bit under the weather and his whiskers were shorter and stumpier than they should have been. Then he developed a large hole in his throat (I posted about that ages ago), but some really good medicine and constant care pulled him through and the hole has now gone.

When I put him back in with his friends he developed fungus on one of his pectoral fins. I've been dosing him with anti-fungus treatment but it doesn't seem to have made a difference.

This catfish now has nothing but stumps where his pectoral and anal fins used to be and he has no whiskers. He still has his tail and dorsal fin. I don't know what else to do for him. The other catfish are in wonderful condition and I've never had any problems with them.

I've now moved him into a 30l tank where he lives with two Whitecloud Mountain Minnows (who are in there after having their tails bitten off by Tiger Barbs in my Barb tank) and a male Betta.

Does any body have any suggestions as to what might be causing this? I have to hold my hands up and say that when he was in the hospital tank last time being treated for the hole in his throat, I put aquarium salt in to help the wound. I had no idea that Corys didn't like salt. Could this have hurt his fins and whiskers? If this is the case, shouldn't they have grown back by now? It's been around 3 months since he was exposed to salt.

Can anybody help?

 

[Teelie]

Despite the sticky to the contrary, Cories are alright with salt, at least the more commonly kept ones are. More likely the whiskers were worn down by gravel or sharp substrate. The fungus sounds like a persistent one. I don't know what else you could do to treat it with and I don't know how long a fish without fins can live.

 

[adcs]

I have sand in my tanks so I'm a bit puzzled about his loss of whiskers. I'd like to think that putting salt in his hospital tank didn't melt his bits off.

I had a good look at him last night and it looks like his fins are growing back but the quality of them is really poor (split and bitty). He kind of wriggles and uses his tail to move around so having no pectoral fins hasn't really stopped him from foraging for food or getting out of the way of the Betta when he comes to investigate.

If it's just persistent fungus then I might try a different brand of fungus control. I'm currently using King British Anti-Fungus stuff and it's usually very good.

I wonder if he could just be a bad specimen with a rubbish immune system which is contributing to his inability to fight off infections. I only mention this as nobody else in my tanks have ever had a problem. Even when my fish beat each other up (usually Barbs or Angels) and tear off fins, they never get fungus and their fins grow back within days/weeks.

Hmmmmmm.....

 

[NEON98101]

iI hope this would help. I had some similar experience with some of my corys, well not as severe as yours but lighter extent.
I noticed one of the cory grow fungus on one of the tip of the pectoral fin. And also notice the fungus grew on the tip of little torn fin. Small but the tip was torn. But she was a shy Melanitius cory I don't see often in the jungled community tank. And I knew it would be tough just catching her and move to the smaller hospital tank. So I thought about it and decide to lightly medicate the tank first and see what happen. If getting worse, I was planning to move all the decoration and catch her and move. So anyway, I put 2~3 drops of blue stuff I think it call Malachite or something. You use for ick care. Anyway, they recommend for 1 drop for a gallon. And tank was 20 G but consider the decoration, water must be 15~16G. So dose was like 1/5th. Anyway, I did this like 2 days and the fungus was gone. And I did notice she grew back the fin in about a week or so. Beside the medication, I did attempt to keep the tank extra clean(sucking up the left over more often) and changed the water more and often also.
And I also had experience with cory's wisker loss. I had 7 adult Pandas and one day I notice the 2 of the males have much shorter wisker than healthy one. However none of the 5 females have short wiskers. Just 2 males. Anyway, at first I thought is this because my gravel is too sharp. And I did some research about the wisker loss in Corys. And read few articles and find out that there are 2 cause for this. One is sharp object(gravels,sands, etc) but also they note that cory could lose wisker from high nitrite or nitrate, forgot which. But they are saying that the cory could lose wisker from the bad water condition. I also read about the article `saying some cory is living in the sharp rocky river and they have no trouble keeping wisker. So I personally believe they do lose their wisker more often from the water condition than sharp object. I'm not saying it doesn't happen from the sharp object but more frequent from the water condition. Anyway, I checked the water condition. And I find it is lower PH than I was thinking. So I did frequent water change next couple days. And I do more often since then. And their wisker grew back nicely. And they have longer fine tipped wisker now.
This is all my speculation but I do believe they lose wisker from water condition(high nitrite or nitrate and too low PH which too acid side water). And I think they can grow their wisker or fins from high nutritional food. Which nobody can accuse me of not supplying to my corys. So feed some meaty food beside the flakes or pellets. And do water change more often to ensure the high water quality. And their wisker grow back in no time. Well, that happened to me. I didn't change my gravels although I thought they maybe little sharper side. And since I start doing more water change, they have not lost their wisker. So anyway, I reasoned that they lost their wisker from the acidic water(after all ph was low) and/or high nitrite, nitrate level which I can see it happen. Since they were in my breeding,conditioning tank that they were fed well all the time. And I do believe they grow their wisker back quicker if they are fed well(which I think make sense) and heal faster also. I still feed them well since they make eggs all the time. But I do water change more and often. And they all still have nice long wiskers.
I'm not a scientist or expert of the Cory but this was my observation from my experience. I hope it will help you.

 

[adcs]

Thanks for the advice, NEON98101.

I think you might be on to something with the loss of whiskers thing. We've got very low pH in the water around here (lower than 6.5pH). I'll need to buy a low pH kit to get an accurate reading (I already have kits that test pH levels at 6.5 - 7.4 and 7.2 - 8.5).

I've also tested the dGH and that came out at 18.

While the catfish is in his hospital tank I've been doing daily water changes taking out left over food etc. I've been finding it hard to get the Nitrite levels down from 0.25ppm. Fortunately, the medicine I've been using requires doses every 24 hours so I can get away with changing 25% of the water everyday without affecting his medication.

Yesterday I accidentally sucked him onto the siphon tube. He wasn't keen on that and it definitely ruined my day, I can tell you!

Right, so you think that by feeding him some nice food and keeping his water the way he likes it might make him better? I'll try that, then.

Thanks.