# Help! sick oto



## pandragon (Jul 10, 2014)

I got some otos yesterday, drip acclimated them over several hours, stuck em in the qt and one was acting more sickly then the others. It flittered to the surface for air twice with slightly red gills and a bulging gill cover. It hung out on the screen I have in the qt to keep the frogbit from getting tossed in overflow filter and is still hanging out there. I haven't seen it scurry for food when the lights are off like the others do and it doesn't even suck onto the screen like the others, it just hangs there by its fins.

I don't know what its got, flukes. nitrite burn from the store, something else? It has a red spot I noticed today under its eye. I don't want my other fish to get sick like this one is. Any ideas or advice would be much appreciated.

I will try getting him into a cup to take better pics tomorrow if need be, but I don't want to hurt him/her. Its buddies are starting to get chubby tummies and this one is still gaunt so I don't think its eating even when I put cucumber with an algae wafer stuck inside under its nose, but on the other hand none of them have touched it but are scarfing the diatoms.

Thanks for any advice anyone can give


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## pandragon (Jul 10, 2014)

One of the 5 died. It wasn't the one in the above picture, that one was still hanging on with its fins trying to breathe under the filter. 

The one that died had a swollen green belly with a lot of black stuff inside, a little red on top of head and down around gill area, but not bloody looking. I looked at its gills and they seemed fine, but when I opened its belly expecting to see a worm or something, I was welcomed to an explosion of green and black goo that smelled awful and a big hollow cavity where the organs were supposed to be. 

Did a parasite eat the poor fishy then leave to find another host before bacteria set in or could this be a bacterial infection that spread throughout the poor fishy? 

Should I medicate tank with anything? The other fish are showing some red around eye and head like the one that died, more so than the normal pinkish I have seen pics of healthy ottos with. They are all hiding in the back of the tank with dorsal fins clamped as well, except for one who was tagging the others pushing them out of their hiding places towards food, plants, and all the places the speedy fish had explored earlier. 

Ammonia, nitrites at 0
I vacuumed pretty well resulting in about 20-25% water change. The fish who was clinging to the screen dropped to the bottom and scooted to the others, he is the reddist of them all, other than the one with a red slit mark under its gill and a weird bulging cover.

I rearranged the decor while vacuuming to give the fish better access to the currant from the filter overflow and moved the floaters into the corner so they wouldn't get sucked into the filter. 

I know these are cheap fish who aren't treated well and have a high mortality rate, but I would like to save some if possible and want to make sure the disease doesn't spread to all the fish.

Please could someone help, I have been searching late nights since I noticed they were acting funny trying to figure out what is wrong and don't want to medicate haphazardly causing them more stress.



ps I have pics of dissection I will upload as soon as I can


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## pandragon (Jul 10, 2014)

I just found another one dead, I think it was the one who kept surfacing for air. It had a big bulging swirl like a worm or something trying to pop through its skin. Now to try to find the best internal parasite medicine and hope to keep the speedy fish from getting what the others got.

My 4 year old saw the fishy floating and kept asking, "fishy why not swimming?" I told her her fishy went to heaven but we need to be extra quiet so we don't lose the other fishes who are really sick and she wanted to help make fish feel better.

I might lose 2 more tonight for how they are acting, sitting on the bottom barely moving, fins clamped. The healthy-ish one avoids the sick ones now and seems to be eating still. I hope he pulls through (at least I think its a he, hard to tell when small)

does anyone know of a good internal parasite medicine?


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## pandragon (Jul 10, 2014)

I couldn't get any pics to turn out, sadly.  I still have three semi healthy ottos who were doing better until I checked on them 10 hours later, their tails had started to deteriorate. I treated the worst one with diluted h2o2, figured if you could squirt it on plants in the tank it couldn't hurt a fish to bad. I got some tetra fungus/bacteria killing fizzy tabs (formalin/formaldehyde whatever base) and an internal uv sterilizer with powerhead (no canister filter to put inline uv on).

I plan on running uv sterilizer for 24 hours followed by the tabs. I really hope ottos aren't dependent on a specific bacteria from wherever they come from to digest food, since the medicine will probably kill it. I haven't found any studies on otos about their biology and interaction with their habitat, just here-say and rumors without any evidence.

I also bought some prazi pro, then their poo stopped being stringy and went back to normal before the fin rot started.

Even though these guys are still under warranty and I can return them if they die, I really don't want to lose them.


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## barrel (Dec 31, 2011)

whenever a fish is sick you want to do things carefully and simple, not in excess. 
When using medication you want to follow the dosage exactly and also factor that rocks and plants makes the total water amount decrease.

Stick to one medication at a time. 


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Run the UV some short time 

Keep the tank oxygenated (air pump, airstones,bubbles) 
Stop creating fish stress inside the tank (moving items around, putting hands inside, keep them in one tank)

Add some medication that helps restore/strengthen their slime coat. see if they can fight it off themselves.
seachem stressguard, api stresscoat.

or add the the prazi pro.

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i'd just keep the tank oygenated, hands off stress-free, good water chem, add the correct dose of ONE medication (Stressguard or prazi-pro ( if real bad) ) and see how it goes from there.

since some are relatively healthy, help restore stresscoat.


if you make a cocktail of medications youre just gonna make em die.



(edit)
by the way since it appears that you've already dosed whatever tank then that would need to be removed before trying a new medication
you could uv/carbon it, wait it off, or do some water change to shorten the wait off...


i said prazi pro since you already bought it. another option is paraguard.

before new dosing..if you don't think they could fight it off themselves with the help of stresscoat medication,prazipro, or paraguard 
then you could resort to seachems stronger medications (check their site)


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## pandragon (Jul 10, 2014)

I haven't dosed anything yet to the tank, would never imply mixing meds, don't move things around unless I have to when vacuuming to get he goo out once a week, or when they don't eat their veggies/algae wafers before it fouls the water (algae wafers are the worst as they attack it like a shark darting into a ball of fish making a huge mess in the tank). Just treating random medicines doesn't help without having the slightest clue as to what is wrong. Sadly I don't have the facilities to do a swab and culture of the affected areas and properly diagnose bacteria, protozoa, fungus, or whatever the heck is attacking my sick fish, and since they are so small it would be nearly impossible to do so If I had everything to do that properly. 

I will do a full treatment of one medicine including final water changes and filtration afterwards to rid the tank of any left over before waiting a few days for the fish to recover before dosing another. If I did not make myself clear in the above posts. Also, I am very wary of anything that might irritate the fish to make them produce more slime, or using aloe or artificial polymers that make them more slimy without actually knowing how it actually affects the fish. The lfs covers the fish in some kind of stress coat product that never seems to help anything all the while saying its a wondrous thing and you should buy it and just float your fish for a few minutes before dumping them into your main tank.

Note, uv sterilizers only work with slow flow rates unless you have a high wattage one, which I wouldn't be surprised if the heat sterilized the water as much if not more than the uv. The more time the water is in contact with the bulb the more the cells of the pathogens, organic compounds, some ferts get broken down and more hours of running insures that all the water molecules carry most if not all the pathogens through the sterilizer multiple times to get the best sterilization effect possible. The uv is the least invasive of every treatement as it reduces pathogens in the water giving the fish's immune system a bit of a break so they can, hopefully, fight off the infection. 

These fish are very streamlined, built for currents not bubblers, I increased under surface current and flow to provide the currents these fish are used to in the wild where they usually come from and kept surface agitation to a minimum to reduce co2 loss so that the plants can provide lots of o2 for them.

Ammonia, nitrite have been constant 0 and nitrate around 5ppm so I know that the tail rot isn't caused by nitrogen levels. Every other test is fine and matches main tank, ph7.5 ish, kh7, gh 10+.


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## barrel (Dec 31, 2011)

seemed as if you were making a mixed drink with peroxide, fizz tabs, and praxi pro.

-specified a strength range of medication

-uv vs carbon

-excess underwater current (in an aquarium) with sick fish is stress
powerhead with an adapter to put air tube in

since summed it up as fin rot, gill fluke, then look at this

http://www.seachem.com/support/MedicationsChart.pdf

relates to uv

http://www.seachem.com/Library/Articles/Control_of_Fish_Diseases.pdf


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## pandragon (Jul 10, 2014)

No mix, I treated the worst case of tail rot with a very diluted drop of h202 and water in the net outside of the tank (was out max of a few seconds) and the deterioration, redness, and swelling stopped (it went from normal looking tail to half a tail over night and was a red stub within a couple days and I didn't want it spreading to the blood).

One still is pooing stringy stuff (worm of some sort more than likely) and frantically trying to find every scrap of diatoms off the tank to eat but not eating any supplemented food (algae wafers, fresh blanched zucchini, cucumbers, greens, etc)
Also not noticeably gaining weight.

It is hard to tell each fish apart because they look so darned similar. 2 have hardly a tail left, which could be caused by bacteria, fungus, external parasites, etc. 

I think the ones with gill flukes or some kind of gill damage were among the ones with abdominal bacterial infections (these two can be secondary infections following parasite infestation, but doesn't have to be)

I have purigen, no carbon. Will take filter media out and stop uv when dosing meds since uv decomposes meds and purigen/carbon can soak it up rendering it useless.

I did initial uv treatment (internal 9 watt uv with powerhead ) for around 20 hours or so then continue on a daily basis of 4-6 hours a day before treatement and after treatment is finished and meds are out of water/no longer actively working to help clear up anything that could remain in the water.

Prazi based dewormers and the furan antibiotic/k dichromate fizz things seem to be some of the gentlest treatments for common parasites like intestinal worms and gill flukes and the secondary infections that can follow. I would probably start with methelene blue for ich over the copper or formaldehyde/malachite green whatever based stuff that kills inverts and tends to kill or damage eggs and fry.

I probably spelled things wrong or got a couple names a bit mixed up since I don't have the spellings and descripts in front of me atm, but I think you get it.


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## pandragon (Jul 10, 2014)

Parasite treatment nearly over, still a few days for medicine to be active. Gills look much better, less red, a little torn/chaffed looking though. One of them still gulps air from time to time, but is acting fine otherwise. The one who burned its face keep sleeping by the heater...I am expecting a new heater in mail tomorrow, and I thought eheim was a good brand...Ammonia spiked at .5ppm after worms started dying, I saw what looked like up to 4 different species some flat and possibly segmented like a tape worm, others looked like planaria with a triangle head, and others didn't look as flat, some were around an inch long thread like and clear/white. A few are still alive, but I think they are the harmless planaria, short, move in s pattern, possible triangular head. One day I need a microscope to see these things properly.

I am still watching water params constantly and keeping an eye on the burn victim. Poor thing might be blind in one eye and have some gill damage, seems to be doing better though, swelling went down a bit. I have pretty hard water with lots of electrolytes so I won't bother adding any kind of salts to the tank to supplement what might be lost through the wound. 

I got a small reptile water dish in there I place there algae wafers in, one fish seemed to like it and has been hanging out on it. I found it on top of the mushy algae wafer I added earlier, hopefully it is eating it and not making a mess. (They tend to swim through the algae wafer after it gets all mushy and make it fly all over the tank, then rasp the bare area for some reason)

Thanks barrel for advice

btw my lfs doesn't sell seachem meds, only tetra, api, and top fin


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