What happened to my swordtail?

[ronin]

This morning I woke to find my male swordtail acting a little funny. His swimming seemed kind of wobbly but he still had an appetite when I fed everyone. However, this evening, I came back to find him pretty much corkscrewing through the water in a very agitated state. He's breathing very rapidly, his body seems to be rigid in a bit of a curved position, and when he tries to swim quickly, his entire body is literally rotating along the horizontal axis and he's lacking control as he'll keep swimming until he runs into something. Both his pectoral fins seem to be functional though.

No other fish in the tank are exhibiting any of the same symptoms and water parameters are pretty normal. Nitrate was a little high a week ago but I changed 1/3 of the water then. I added some Maracyn Plus to the tank but I'm not holding out much hope for him. Is this some sort of bacterial bladder infection? Any help/info greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Angry_Platy]

What other fish are in with him now? If there are no catfishes, cories, loaches etc.(scaleless fish) I would recommend adding some aquarium salt to the tank...approx 1tbsp per 5gallon. It doesn't sound good though at this stage

Chances are it is a swim bladder problem.....

 

[ronin]

Unfortunately I do have 3 cories in the tank so I guess salt is not an option. What exactly causes swim bladder problems anyway? Cause I seem to get that problem alot in this tank. I've lost a couple of other swordtails and gouramis in the past few months because of it but never in this dramatic of a fashion and never more than one fish at a time. Usually they just start hanging out more at the surface and swimming slowly and then after a day or two I see them start lying on their sides at the bottom. No medication I've tried ever seems to help (Maracyn Plus, Pimafix, Melafix).

What other fish are in with him now? If there are no catfishes, cories, loaches etc.(scaleless fish) I would recommend adding some aquarium salt to the tank...approx 1tbsp per 5gallon. It doesn't sound good though at this stage

Chances are it is a swim bladder problem.....

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