Dropsy AND Septicemia- and now bloody barbels

[TrebleClef84]

Ok. Things havent been going well for me fish wise. I have a 55 gallon tank. 3 small dojos (3 ish inches), 8 sewellia lineolata, 2 adolescent yo yos, 2 young Botia kubotai. As of right now, nitrates are low (I haven't vacuumed in 6 days due to maracyn 2 treatment which will be vacuumed out when I get home from work). Nitrites are zero, ammonia zero. pH is good and water is soft. The only thing I don't like is that my total alkalinity is low, but the ph has alway remained steady. I do 20 gallon water changes once a week.

My oldest dojo had a little red on its fin, and I ignored it because I thought it was just a slight injury. Since I've been online studying the dojos in my hospital tank (who are fine so far by the way), it looks like septicemia. So I ran a course of maracyn 2, but it doesn't seem to have had an effect. Now the oldest dojo looks a little swollen and the tail looks bloodshot, the dorsal fin looks red as well. The other two dojos might have the slightest of a red streak on their tails. It's possible that one of the kubotai has a slightly swollen belly, but I can't tell if it's dropsy or if he's just a pig. One of the yo yos now has bloody barbels, a dojo loach has blood red gills. All fish are active and eating.

I was going to treat the entire tank with triple sulfa, but I am told that it's not good to use on a main tank because it crashes the bio setup. Someone mentioned mixing it in the food, so I put one packet into a week's worth of food, added some water, and made tiny food/med clumps.

Also: do you think my tanks is overcrowded? I know it will be when everyone grows up, but I plan to have a 90 gallon by then.

E: Nitrate: Almost 0
Nitrite: 0
GH: about 100ish
Chlorine: 0
KH: About 80
pH: Between 6.8 and 7.2
This is according to a dip stick thing though. How good are those for judging?

[Diana]

I use the dip stick tests and have found them to be OK, as long as the sticks are kept dry (close the lid right away after taking out a strip). Your parameters look good.

However when there is a question about some sort of infection going on, do some extra water changes. Target the floor of the tank to make really certain that you are removing all possible organic matter. Clean the filter, too, of course, since anything (trapped wastes...) is really still in the tank system.

Yes, move on to a different antibiotic, one that the fish will eat if possible. With the redness showing up inside, the antibiotics need to get inside the fish. Some water treatments will enter the fish though the gills, but some treatments only treat external infections.

I have used Triple Sulfa and did not have any problems with the bio filter.

[TrebleClef84]

Ok, so I've been practically living in the world of fish medicine for the past few weeks, and I've come to realize the importance of aquatic forums as a mean of treating fish. Unfortunately, most of these encounters end badly or people don't update and say exactly what they did when things work. I promised myself that if my fish lived, I would post a detailed account here for someone in the future to find it. My fish have almost recovered, so even if something happens to them now that I've posted, this is at least a good beginning for treatment.

Cleaning:
I removed the substrate, and all decorations except for the most beloved hidey holes, so they had somewhere to hide. I cleaned out the filters, washed all their decorations in VERY hot water.After the Maracyn 2 treatment, I replaced the filter cartridges completely.

Water Changes:
After the Maracyn 2 treatment, I did 25-50% water changes every day, concentrating on vacuuming from the bottom of the tank. I used Dr. Tim's One and Only to keep the bio filter up.

Medications:
I started out with a Maracyn 2 treatment. It didn't have any effect on the fish, but you never know. It might have killed off the bacteria in the water. I did the full 5 day course. I then did 2 50% water changes 12 hours apart. After that, I mixed 1 packet of triple sulfa with some fish flakes and a tiny bit of water. The final product was 6 small tabs of flake and medicine- maybe 3/4 cm in diameter. I gave this to them (15 fish total) once a day. It was then that I noticed the red streaks in the tails going away, but the gills were still blood red and sometimes purplish at this point (after 5 or so days). So I started doing "baths" for those worst affected, but still continued with the medicated food.

Baths:
This might be where people will disagree with what I did.I sucked out 2.5 gallons of water from the tank into a bucket and put the three dojos in there. I then put in 16 drops of Methylene Blue and 4 teaspoons of salt already dissolved in warm water. I also took a packet of Maracyn 1 AND Maracyn 2, dissolved it in 10 CCs of warm water, then put 5 CCs of the mix into the bucket. I left them in there for 30 mins, then returned them without the water to the main tank. I did this twice for those worst affected- two days apart.
-now this process seemed REALLY radical to me, since I always learned to mess with fish water only very slowly. With more delicate fish, I would probably do half strength of everything. The info where I got this crazy idea was from here: http://www.aquarium-pond-answers.com/20 ... baths.html

After 4 days, everyone seems much batter. No more swelling, red streaks, or red gills. I hope it stays that way.

[starsplitter7]

Thank you so much for giving us an update.

I have done radical treatments when I felt there was no other option. In another couple weeks let us know how the fish are doing.

Any idea how they got ill?

Really happy to hear that they appear to be recovering.