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Well I've now lost two guppies to dropsy in my 75G. I've been under the impression that there was nothing you could do for dropsy but I've read posts that directed people to a website that suggests primafix and melafix as treatment. Now I've had one of my favorite beautiful gold rams come down with the dreaded pine cone scales and I finally have a hospital tank available to me. I'm optimistic now that I might be able to save it unlike my gups. I'm going to QT it very soon and begin treating it. Has anyone else tried melafix or primafix as a treatment for dropsy? What were your results? I was under the impression that they were just antiseptics rather then full on disease treatments.

As a side note, I'm fully aware that dropsy is generally caused by bad water conditions. I refuse to believe that's the problem with my tank. I do water changes EVERY Thursday 25-30% I'd say. I feed my fish a variety of different foods (although flakes are the basic staple). It's so frustrating as I have two friends who both have 55gallon tanks. NEITHER of them ever does any maintenance on their tanks beyond topping off evaporated water once a month or even bi-monthly not to mention they are horrible overfeeders. They NEVER have algae outbreaks (my glass is now coated with green spot), never have ich (I've had to deal with two infestations) and never seem to lose any fish. UGH. Sorry for the rant.

rewd,

Sorry to hear about the troubles you are going through, but from your description you are doing the right thing (unlike your friends, which I am sure will eventually pay for their treatment of the fish).

Placing the Ram in the hospital tank cannot harm the fish more than it is already. The 2 meds you mentioned are a good attempt to treat the Ram, it is worth giving it a shot. If your ram eats vegetables then feed him some mushy peas as well.

Dropsy, as you might know, is not an illness but a symptom for various illnesses. I also read reports of people that beat that illness, but most of the time they don’t. It would greatly depend on identifying that caused the Dropsy and then to treat for this particular illness rather then trying to fight a symptom without knowing what’s behind it. But that is a problem though. In your case, given that you recently lost other fish with the same symptom, I would assume that the illness is either infectious (maybe through the water or by eating a sick fish) or that some factor in your tank is off that causes fish to get sick.

I would suggest you try to find out more about possible causes for Dropsy, and maybe some additional entries here can help more that I did.

Hope this helps,

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Thanks for the advice. She's a tough one to get out of the tank. I'm sure this will just turn into a waste of melafix but I'll be keeping my fingers crossed. Rams are nearly impossible to find around here and when you do they are usually sick and sub par in quality. It was a complete stroke of luck I found these two gold rams that were in great health.

What you say about dropsey is basically what I thought as well: that it's generally incureable. Her behavior is the same, however. She's not acting listless at all and she's eating just fine. Although in the case of dropsey that doesn't usually matter, right?

Well to my complete surprise she's no longer pine coned out. She's not eating tho since I put her in the QT tank and her color is very pale so I'll be keeping an eye on her. I hope that is just a side effect of being switched to another tank. Keeping my fingers crossed.