A Disease?

[shanna]

Okay, so, I'm guessing I just don't have luck with female fish lately. This time it's my new female molly (which I got as a companion for my male molly). I bought for this past Friday.

Yesterday I went out, got home maybe three or four hours later and she had this /huge/ red mark on her. When I left she was fine. So I thought maybe my female betta had attacked her (there's a problem with them fighting over my mollys' algae wafers). I was going to come on here and ask what I could do to pick up the healing pace, but then I looked at her this morning and it had spread to her otherside.

It reminds me of.. say when you skin your knee on the gravel. That's what it looks like, or else it reminds me of that movie Cabin Fever. *shudder*

I checked my water quality, and everything is fine. It has been the same, constant, since I put up the tank weeks ago. I also introduced a pleco and a snail when I put her in, and they are fine. I can't think of what or why this is..




:/

[shanna]

A side view of it..

[shanna]

Nevermind. Brought her to the petstore and the diagnosis was Dropsy.

[amanichen]

shanna said:

Nevermind. Brought her to the petstore and the diagnosis was Dropsy.

That's not dropsy -- that's a wound that's become swollen and infected.

If all this happened in the span of 4 hours, then the fish was physically wounded.

[shanna]

Hm. Even if the scales were lifted?

I guess maybe my assumption was right. My female bettas are hogs and like the wafers that I put in for my mollys. The one creamsicle molly in particular wouldn't come up to the top, so I put in wafer for her to eat at the bottom. I guess maybe they got in a fight over it. :/

She's dead now, but would there have been any way to heal that sort of infection?

[amanichen]

shanna said:

Hm. Even if the scales were lifted?

First, dropsy is a swelling of internal organs, which your fish may or may not have had.

Second, if that wound appeared in a total of FOUR hours then there's no question that your fish was injured or attacked. Bacteria just don't do that sort of damage that quickly.

She's dead now, but would there have been any way to heal that sort of infection?

Well, the fish probably died from organ damage and fluid and electrolyte loss rather than bacteria. Assuming it's not injured too bad, you would probably want to get the fish in some salted water with an antibiotic.

[shanna]

Alright, thanks. I'm hoping I won't have this problem again, but I'll store that away for future reference.

[shanna]

I don't want to start a new thread, because this goes under much the same thing. There's like an epidemic in my tank. It started with my molly, but since then has killed off a female betta, a pleco, and presumably two neon tetra (haven't found the second body yet). I tested the water yesterday. The pH is still constant, the ammonia level is at like .25, 0 nitrates, and .25 nitrites. The temperature is still 78/80 F.

Yesterday one of my female betta died. She was just not acting like herself, though her fins weren't clamped, her color hadn't changed. She wouldn't eat, though. There were no marks, injuries, spots, etc, that would indicate some kind of problem. She just hung out of at the top of the tank, and would try to jump, her head coming out of the water. I noticed though, that the color on her head got deeper. She had some red/pinks behind her eyes, though the rest of her body was nude. Today my yellow female betta is in much the same condition, and her head is noticablly pink/red. Her mouth looks odd too.

Other than that, nothing.

My pleco (which I think introduced whatever it is in my tank) had been looking odd. His eye looked like it was blind, white, and his skin looked like it was coming off. Yesterday I couldn't find him at all. Then this morning he was floating at the top, all of his skin basically having fell off, and you could see his skeleton.

Then I found a neon tetra at the back of the tank, it's eye and the inside of it's head gone (which, I guess, someone could have eaten out).

Oh! My older female betta has a white/clear film on the right side of her body. She won't even use the fin on that side to swim.

My mom talked to the lady at Walmart, who said she uses Melafix when things happen to her fish (popeye, etc). So my mom bought some. We also have some Jungle Fungus Elminator.

I did a 25% water change.

Otherwise I don't know what to do. I feel like an idiot, having all these problems, but. ^^;

[amanichen]

Two days ago you said the water quality was "fine", but now it's a .25 NH4 and .25 NO2. This makes me wonder what happened between then and now to cause such a large change?

It sounds like your fish may be having some bacterial problems due to the not-so-good water quality. Was your tank properly cycled in the first place? Other than yesterday, when was the last time you tested your water?

As for your original fish though, it's still hard to swallow that the wound that large appeared within the span of four hours, especially. Wounds like that don't show up that quickly without some physical damage in the first place, and as I said before bacteria don't work that quickly. It's possible that it's just a coincidence, but, something isn't adding up.

[shanna]

I know I know I know. I've checked the water quality /every/ day this week, because of the deaths. When I checked it the day of the molly report, the quality was fine, then I checked it yesterday and today and the water chemistry adds up to that. I really have no clue. The only thing I add to the tank, is say, maybe a half a gallon of water because of condensation. And today I added Melafix. I feed my fish, occasionally add an algae wafer for a molly or pleco, and for my other pleco I add some squash or other vegetable. That's /all/.

And as to the injury, I was at home, my friends came over (firs time they've seen my tank) and we admired my fish. She was at the bottom, and so who all moved over to look at her. I even popped in an algae wafer, because it was time to feed everyone and she wasn't coming up to the top. It's possible she had the injury then, but if she did, it wasn't visible. We sat there for like five minutes watching her eat the wafer. Then we left at around 10:30, came home around 1:30. I was getting into bed and I saw the red spot. So.

[amanichen]

I don't have nearly enough information to determine what started all of this, but I can say you should probably be doing some water changes in combination with an antibiotic. You might need something more powerful than melafix, so think about JFE or triple sulfa.