Hey Annie,

Welcome to FnF! I'm sorry one of your fish is ill. Hopefully, we can help!

First off, I'm glad to hear that your tank maintenance routine sounds good. Do you use cartridges in your filter? If so, can you describe the filter media's contents (carbon, zeolite, other ammonia removers, etc.)? And if you're using cartridges, how often do you change them (and if there's more than one, do you change both at the same time)? Even though your water params look ideal... we'd like to know if your tank perhaps recently experienced a cycle or mini-cycle with changing out filters?

Also, which water dechlorinator/conditioner do you use?

Is this fish bloated/pineconing all over or just in the belly region? How much (and what) do you feed them? Has the fish been poo'ing? If so, have you seen what it looks like (brown & clumpy or white and stringy)?

If this fish is exhibiting symptoms of any illness, you are best to isolate him in a separate QT tank and begin some treatments.

If this fish is bloated in just the tummy region... it's quite possible he is constipated and requires some fasting; 3-4 days followed by some frozen/thawed/shelled pea. 2 rounds of fasting may be required.

If this is true dropsy, begin treatments suggested in our dropsy article. Is this fish eating at all? If he is... it's probably best to treat with antibiotic food... Medi-gold, if you can find it, is probably the best medicated food as it contains Kanamycin but Jungle's Antibacterial food is more easily found and may help (but not as strong an antibiotic in there). If you end up using Jungle's Antibiotic food (or the fish isn't eating or won't eat the medicated food)... consider adding Kanaplex (half dose daily instead of full dose every other day) or the combination of Maracyn/Maracyn II. You may also want to add RidIch+ or Maracide to treat for possible external parasites which often cause secondary problems when stressed from dropsy or other symptoms.

We can help advise on the correct course of treatment once we know more!

Michele


Last Edited By: Mattsmommy2 Sep 28 08 7:48 AM. Edited 1 times.