Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => The Emergency Room => Topic started by: fishcake76 on May 07, 2015, 05:36:52 PM
-
Hi,
One of my Cories is having problems with her swim bladder. She can't stay at the bottom unless she keeps swimming. If she stops she floats to the surface.
When she is swimming, she is feeding and wiffling about normally but I think she must be getting tired as when she stops she floats on the surface and breathes quickly. She is not gasping but she is breathing quicker than the others.
Do swim bladder issues resolve themselves, or can they be treated? I've got the clove oil ready but don't want to call it a day if she could recover.
Also, what causes swim bladder problems?
FC76
-
Swim bladder problems can result from several underlying causes from constipation (the bowels press on the swim bladder) to infections, viral and bacterial. The problem is that you need to find the underlying cause and treat that.
But there is another possibility with cories. They do gulp air from the surface, so does she just need to give the fish equivalent of a good burp? From what I read, swim bladder problems usually result in the fish sinking to the bottom when not actively swimming, or listing to one side, or doing barrel rolls rather than floating.
Sorry, not really much help :-\
-
Sorry to hear about this, Fishcake. I have extensive experience of treating swimbladder problems like these - but with goldfish and particularly a fancy goldfish I had who suffered from this almost constantly for an entire year. What you're describing is what I called "the helium balloon effect" ie as soon as the fish stops swimming, they float straight up as though they're a helium balloon.
The various treatments I tried were, in this order:
(i) dietary - frozen pea, blanched in boiling water to enable the shell to slide off easily, then cut into tiny morsels [this might be easier if you transferred her to a quarantine tank], chopped courgette, a tiny morsel of fresh papaya (wow - certainly had a laxative effect on the fish!), frozen or preferably live bloodworm; keeping on a 'no dried food' diet of these for several days [I've since learned that spirulina can help with this issue]
(ii) raising the water temperature slightly and lowering the water level, so that the fish didn't have to 'travel' too far during these spells and therefore become less stressed by them, +/- a dose of aquarium salt but NB salt can't be used with cories so ignore this part [shame as this often worked wonders within 24hrs]
(iii) anti- swimbladder treatment
(iv) or, after the required length of time after the above and if still not working, anti-internal bacteria treatment as a last resort
If you're in the position to be able to move this fish into a QT, then that might enable you to do the above suggestions, particularly (i) before another fish eats the food intended for your "swimbladdered" one.
Hopefully either the fish will expel any excess gas of its own accord, or else some of the above suggestions will solve the problem, and there will be no need to even contemplate the clove oil any time soon! Best of luck!
-
Thanks fcmf. I'll remember this if it happens again as I have just put her to sleep after finding her wedged under a plant leaf on her side.
I am feeling terrible now as it seems I could have tried all you suggested, especially as
I am wondering if diet was the issue.
Any way, it's done now and I just hope others can be educated from this post too.
:-[ :'(. :vcross:
FC76
-
Another thing to watch out for with cories is that are a few species that are not bottom feeders, but fish that dwell in the middle waters too! This doesn't really sound like your fish, but you have to watch out for it!
-
That's true, Steve. However, with swimbladder-type malfunctions, it's quite different from the fish's usual behaviour - usually, it either pulls the fish up to hang/rest at the water surface like a helium balloon, pulls the fish down to the bottom as though it were a lump of lead or as though there were a magnet underneath the fish holding it down there, or else the fish floats on its back/belly-up or hanging from its tail (or possibly nose) or rolls from side to side. If unsure - eg if the fish is simply resting at the bottom or simply hanging about in a quiet part of the tank beside but out of the way of the filter outlet - the key point is how the fish behaves if it pauses from using its fins, or if it tries to move from there, and "battling" (as though trying to fight its way with its pectoral fins to move to a different position in the tank or seeing if it sinks like a leadweight or floats upwards in the way I've described) is usually typical.
Likewise, with dropsy, the pine-cone arrangement of the scales is usually so noticeable that there's no mistaking what it is - there oughtn't to be any wondering about whether the scales are pineconed or not.
Hope this helps but NB it's purely from experience of goldfish and may differ with different fish species.