Hi all, I’m hoping for some help with my sick Cory.
Yesterday I was doing a water change and partial gravel clean and noticed that one of my Cory’s was stuck to the filter intake by his tail. He looked fine, so I dislodged him, but he fell to the bottom of the tank on his side and didn’t move. He honestly looked dead, but he wasn’t floating. I removed him from the tank into a bucket thinking he was either dead or about to die and he just laid there on his side. After a few minutes though I saw slight movement, so I turned him right side up and gave him a bit of a jiggle and he swam a little bit to get away from me. Then stayed still, but with his gills moving and his whiskers twitching.
I set up my quarantine tank and moved him in and checked on him through the evening. He seemed to get a little more lively, but not a lot. This morning he is the same- alive, but not moving unless I prod him. He seems a little worse than last night.
I’m quite worried- he doesn’t seem to have any physical symptoms, he looks totally fine, but clearly isn’t. The other Cory’s (and other fish) in my tank are behaving normally- very lively and active. Does anybody have any tips or ideas?
It’s a public holiday here so nothing is open locally, but I could drive to one of the big fish stores about 1.5 hours away if anybody thinks there is medication or treatment or something that could help. I dosed the quarantine tank with API Stress Coat+ when setting up.
I have a 50 litre lightly planted community tank with a dwarf gourami, 8 Harlequin Rasboras and 3 Peppered Corys. Ammonia, nitrates and nitrites are all at 0. My tank has been cycled with all happy fish for 6 months after upgrading from a smaller tank with just the gourami which had been running for 6 months before that. The most recent change was a single new Rasbora that I added 2 months ago. I’ve also had a little bit of algae recently which I’ve been controlling with water changes- i suspect it is because I have a very bright house and it is mid summer (I’m in Australia).
The only notable other thing was that when I tested last night my PH was high- about 8. This was strange as my pH is usually really consistent. I used a combo of pH down and some rainwater (which has a low pH) for the water change and got it back to 7 before filling my emergency tank.