Swim Bladder

[Squishiebabe]

Does anyone have just a bunch of info on Swim bladder disorder, and what you can do about it if you see symptoms ect....Nothings wrong, just want to get educated about fishy abnormal behavious lol

 

[sylvia]

Well it can be caused by all sorts of things. Usualy, the milder cases, are from fish eating dried foods from the surface and taking in air at the same time. This is the sort of problem you often see in goldfish. The more serious cases are caused by internal bacterial infections. The symptoms (kind of obvious ) are problems swimming. The fish may not be able to move up or down in the water - stuck at the surface or laying constantly n the substrate, seemingly unable to move elsewhere. Also, it may be that the fish cannot remain upright, spins/tumbles in the water or cannot remain upright if it stops swimming forwards. With milder cases, often just feeding sinking foods enables the problem to fix itself. Otherwise, feeding a shelled pea can help. With cases caused by an infection, action has to be taken early on to treat with anti-internal bacteria meds. If the infection is not cured in time, some fish can be left with permanent damage. Sometimes euthanasia is necessary if the fish is unable to survive on its own or appears to be suffering. Simialrly, keep in mind that if you 'rescue' a fish that already has swim bladder problems, these could be incurable (caused by a past infection) or even be due to a deformity of the swimbladder/disfunctional swimbladder that the fish was born with. Oh also, some fish are more prone to problems than others - for example goldfish or frontosas - and there is also a more, umm... risky, approach to correcting some swimbladder problems - that is some people have tried to deflate it with a needle. I wouldn't reccomend doing this if you aren't completely certain of what you are doing (for obvious reasons) and it would probably be safest to attempt it on big fish only.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I agree with sylvia, also some swim bladder problems can be genetic- deformed fry from inbreeding often suffer from swimbladder problems at an early age in their lives but unfortunatly there's not alot you can do about this, either the fry corrects itself or it has to be put down as this kind of swimbladder problem is pretty much uncurable and is often seen in inbred livebearer fry.
Also swimbladder problems can be caused by bad water quality- improving the water quality will help the fish's condition but at best there is only a 50/50 recovery rate, and thats if you catch it very early on and treat the fish accordingly.
When a fish is suffering from a swimbladder disorder also moving it to a place with shallow water(i.e breeding net/trap) will help alot as the fish will find it easier to maintain its balance in shallow water and so help improve its chances of recovering. Most fish though die from swimbladder disorders not due to the disorder itself but the fish's lack of ability to aim for food to eat as its condition worsens and so starves to death- when a fish can no longer eat it is best to put it down as there is no hope when it reachs this stage.
In this scenario though, not only feeding it vegetable based foods like cooked de-shelled peas or algae wafers will help but also feeding it foods that stay floating in the water for a long time like freezedried daphinia, tubifex or bloodworms as these foods are easier to eat for the fish because of this reason.

 

[black angel]

great posts.
also theres viruses which can stop the bladder from inflating or deflating properly as well as the bacterial diseases. tumours too can press on the swimbladder, but they can usually be seen when the fish swims and when you look head on.