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My large green severum has been acting strangely for about the past week. He sits in the corner all day and a lot of the time is sitting almost vertical with his head up. His stripes are extremely dark also, and when he was healthy, you couldn't even see his stripes. I noticed that he had a scrape or wound of some sort on his side, which was kind of cottony for a while. Now the cotton is gone but there is still just a hole left there. He has been eating. What should I do?? I did a 25% water change last night...

The tank is a 55 gallon with him, a firemouth, a few clown loaches, and a couple of tiger barbs (which have been getting dropsy lately) and a couple plecos. My nitrates have always been high, and I haven't been able to get them down below about 80ppm. Ammonia is around 10ppm, and I don't have a test kit for nitrites.

So far I've given them melafix and just some off-brand treatment for parasites, velvet, and ich. I also raised the temperature to 85F. Please help if you can...

Edit: I did some research and think it could be hole-in-the-head. Does this sound right? If it is, what treatment works best??

How big is the wound? If its large he could be getting osmotic failure or suffering from weakness or secondary infection.

These are sensitive fish, the ammonia has got to come down to 0 or eventually fish will start to die. Youre either overstocked or underfiltered or something is compromising the efficiency of the filter, possibly the meds you used etc.

The nitrate of 80 is high, but survivable by normal standards with healthy fish for short periods, but a sick fish might start to succumb.

Id get more regular on the water changes, make sure especially that the gravel is spotless.

If it is hexamita (although nothing leads me to believe that it might be from that description) a course of metronidazole should cure it.Dropsy incidentally is often caused by an aggressive combination of bacteria and protozoan infections ( as well as dietary and water quality, and tannin levels) so metronidazole may help there too.

I think the water quality is the most pressing issue though, an injured fish will not do well under those conditions.

Dude,

Take a sample of your water to your lfs and have it tested. If you have an actual ammonia reading of 10 ppm, your fish should be dead. While you are at it, take a sample of your tap water for testing. You should be looking for nitrates in your tap water as water changes should reduce your nitrate levels.

One reason that your ammonia levels may be high is the solution that you use to dechlorinate your water. Some products will give you an abnormal ammonia reading after its use. What do you use.

Unfortunately, dropsy cannot be treated but HITH or HLLE can be treated. In the case of either condition, tank maintenance and water quality are the key. As I posted on another thread - my standard prescription for sick fish is - "Clean your filter, do a 50% water change and vacuum the tank, then call me in the morning."

In your case, I would like you to measure:
- Nitrates in your tap water,
- Nitrates in your aquarium before the water change,
- Nitrates in your aquarium after the water change.

The day after the 50% water change do another 50% water change and vacuum the tank. If you had 80 ppm of nitrates and your water has 10 ppm nitrates, I would expect that your nitrate levels should fall to 45 ppm after the first water change and to 30 ppm after the second water change.

The primary reason for the water changes is the nitrates, the secondary reason is to dilute the MelaFix and other chemicals that you have added to the tank. Hopefully, your filter maintenace included fresh carbon. It will also help to clear the chemicals out of the tank.

At this point, you should be ready to medicate your tank. The question is what symptoms are you seeking to cure? Forget about the barbs as you cannot medicate for dropsy if you have correctly diagnosed their condition. The "pincone" look signals fluid retention and probable organ failure. I would euthanize the fish. A general contributing cause of dropsy is poor water quality.

The severum is lethargic in a "head-up" position. Was the wound in its side along the lateral line of the fish? Was the "cottony" material sharp or fuzzy. If it was sharp edged, it was a likely, secondary fungal or bacterial infection. If it was fuzzy or indistinct, it was possibly pus oozing from the wound.

At this point, I think the severum has either a bacterial infection or HITH/HLLE. However, I would not treat the fish until you answer the above questions as you would simply be shotgunning meds at the animal without a firm idea of the problem.

When you decide to medicate the fish, I would place the fish in a clean container or hospital tank so that you medicate only the sick fish and not your entire tank. The advantage of the separate container is that it will have a known volume so that you can provide an accurate medication dose to the fish, the medication will not affect the other fish in your tank and it will not affect your bio-filter.





__________
"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."
researched from Steven Wright

Dropsy can be treated if you know the initial cause of the problem, dropsy is simply the manifestation of renal system damage,which could be caused by diet, bacteria and other internal parasites as well as water conditions.If you can eliminate the causitive agent there is a chance of recovery. Unfortunately most people dont find the problem in time, and when the fish swells up radically theres usually not much helping them, but not all cases are hopeless.Ive had tiger barbs make a full recovery before now. Hexamita is contagious, so if the fish has been in contact with other fish it may actually be prudent to treat the whole tank.