Poorly Dwarf Gourami. Concluded.

Fishkeeping is great, until some of the fishes health takes a turn for the worst :-( It's been mentioned in a previous post elsewhere on the forum but my female dwarf gourami has not been well for about a week now. Stella (as she has been named by the boys) started swelling up about a week ago. Her faeces is also white and very stringey.

I've tried various things so far:
- couple of 30% water changes (ammonia and nitrite are 0)
- fasting the fish for two days, following by blanched shelled peas (in case it was a bad case of constipation)
- dosing with tonic aquarium salt

None of that has made any difference, and I was beginning to think that maybe it was DG iridovirus. There is no 'pine-coning' though and it doesn't look like dropsy (I've had platies with dropsy in the past, so I know what that looks like). I was starting to think that it could be parasites instead as I'd also noticed her taking in food and then spitting it out again.

However, yesterday I noticed that two of my platies (Polly and Dolly, as they've been named by the boys) all of a sudden were at the bottom of the tank with fins clamped :-(

So now I'm wondering if it's the water after all, even though the parameters are fine (tested with API liquid master kit). But if Stella is suffering from parasites, could she have passed it on to other fishes in the tank?

Until now Stella was very bloated, but generally still swimming, but when I came home from work this afternoon I found her sitting on the substrate and slightly listing to one side  To be doing something, and because poor Stella probably can't get any worse, I made a trip to the nearest LFS and was advised to try Tetra General Tonic. I've dosed fairly lightly as I've not used medication like this before and was worried about affecting the other fish. To my surprise, my tank water has turned very green. It's a bit alien-looking frankly. Stella has been swimming a bit more happily though, so I've taken that as a positive sign.

I'll be doing another bigger water change tomorrow to keep on top of the water quality.

It's a bit distressing though. I really like my pair of dwarf gouramis and would hate to lose one. My big adult platys are very friendly colourful fish and I like them a lot too!

Fingers crossed for an allround recovery!

Mascol the cardinals really won't appreciate aquarium salts, so I'd advise against using them again.

I think tonic is a bit of a misnomer, tonic suggests something beneficial to health like vitamins and some of the chemicals i.e Formaldehyde and Methylene Blue are far from that but they are antibacterial.

Dang, Dolly the platy died overnight :-( Stella the DG still  hanging in there though. Off to work now so will have to see what it looks like later.

Any updates on the Dwarf Gourami, @Mascol ?

Sorry to hear about that, @Mascol. While swimbladder problems can be "managed" to a certain extent (with alterations in the diet such as feeding chopped peas or more frozen/live food and the very occasional dose of aquarium salt if it's tolerated and if dietary changes haven't helped), they do tend to recur repeatedly, and, in your case, it sounded as though you had tried these to no avail.

I'd recommend getting some eSHa 2000 or Waterlife Myxazin in case another fish develops this in future - often anti-bacterial medications such as these are very good, and they also address a range of other conditions (eg finrot) as well, so useful to have "to hand" (as is a medication to address whitespot in the event of an outbreak of that - I prefer to have these meds on standby rather than discover I need them at some hour of the night when the shops aren't open as would be typical ).

Sorry to hear this, well done for 'letting him go' in a kind and respectful manner.