Bala Shark recovery power

Hi,


I have a Bala shark that has lost his rear end fins and 2 cm of scales up his tail
It has been 2 weeks now since and since the whole area being covered in what looks like white fluff, it has all fallen off and this is the result so far, I do salt my aquarium and I think this has prevented infection in te poor devil, it never seemed bothered, swims, albeit with trouble and eats.


The end is all black now and the fluffy white has gone



I have a Birchir and a 7" Syno Decorus and wonder if either of these would have grabben the shark and what looked like, stripped all the scales off, the poor thing even had a white mark on its mouth from what looked like an escape impact with the glass or decor.

Do I need to do anything to help improve his chances of making it?


Mark

Although fish have a great ability to regenerate fins etc, I think it will be touch and go with that shark on wether or not the tail will return. Whatever got it, the injury is pretty far up the tail, mabey too far for regeneration. Heres hoping Im wrong and it makes a full recovery.

Jay

Cheers lads, have no idea what will happen, props to the little guy, he's a plucky one for sure.

Jay it does look like as you've said full regen is not going to happen, hope he gets some sort of fin at least.


Mark

I would try treating him with Melafix if ya could, it is pretty good for regeneration. Might not be enough, but certainly wouldnt hurt!

Rolly

Rolly wrote:

I would try treating him with Melafix if ya could, it is pretty good for regeneration. Might not be enough, but certainly wouldnt hurt!

Rolly

Cheers mate, will give it a try, I need that to have handy anyways, cheers.

I gave the auld sod a salt dip, quite low dosage as am worried I will injure him in some way. I dont think it was bacterial that caused it, one day all was there next day from tail down had no scales, the fin was all there just looked stripped of its outer layer, then it all fell off. It really did look like something grabbed him, there is nothing else in there that could do that decor wise. As a rule now all new fish before entering quarentine get a salt and Methylene blue dip to kill any external bacteria infections hopefully.


Thanks all, we'll see how he gets on and willpost recovery pics.


Mark

Recorded a bit of the Bala Shark now 5 weeks after the serious injury, recovering nicely.


John, those are some of your soon to be Rainbow fish, notice the chunky female, last, she's ready to breed I think. EDIT: Since I have put plants in yesterday they are giving it socks with displaying.


Also this interesting message on youtube


"Are you uploading a video that was shot on July 24, 2010? If so, submit it to Life In A Day, a global experiment to document a single day on earth. Your video could end up in a documentary film produced by Ridley Scott and scheduled to premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival"


Mark

jees when you said bala shark with tail missing i thought "what the hell do you have to take that off a 8" fish" but now i see on the vid he's just a wee'un. swimming seems fine. they are good at regeneration, when i 1st got my 6 they were in bad shape with finrot after thrashing around in the bags on the way home, but a little tonic salt saw them right after a few days. now i dose a tiny bit of marine salt to kill off the nasties, and waterlife meds are great for standby, especially with a big tank as the come in 1l bottles

just curious on how you "dip" the fish, mark. i have heard of treating with this method and its much better than abusing the whole tank with meds (and using so much to treat just 1 or 2 fish)

joey wrote:

jees when you said bala shark with tail missing i thought "what the hell do you have to take that off a 8" fish" but now i see on the vid he's just a wee'un. swimming seems fine. they are good at regeneration, when i 1st got my 6 they were in bad shape with finrot after thrashing around in the bags on the way home, but a little tonic salt saw them right after a few days. now i dose a tiny bit of marine salt to kill off the nasties, and waterlife meds are great for standby, especially with a big tank as the come in 1l bottles

just curious on how you "dip" the fish, mark. i have heard of treating with this method and its much better than abusing the whole tank with meds (and using so much to treat just 1 or 2 fish)

Any small container big enough for the fish, I use a breeding net, pop am in that and lower that into a plastic container, a lot less stressful than a net believe it or not, have been usng salt and Methylene blue for new fish going into the quarentine.

Because of the methylene blue antibacterial I keep it to a couple of minutes as it is not good for the fish to be exposed to an antibacterial for to long as it kills their gut bacteria, like pretty much as strong anitbiotics can do to us humans with prolonged use.

I would advise, as I am not an expert, to read as much reference material on the subject as possible to get a well rounded view on what works best and on what to avoid.

I am not sure of Marine salt, I got tonic salt for my freshie tank, other members will know more about the different salts used and may help you out. I use interpet aquarium salt.


I do believe the salt and the prevention of external bacterial nasties by dips, and very clean water!! has saved my bala who has had an open would for two weeks in the tank and never got an infection at all, and he ate from day one of the injury. What a fish my disabled Bala is. Still no fin grown back yet.

EDIT: Oh and stress coat I think helped him recover without infection too as I dumped in 40ml when I discovered the injury, as well as adding it with water changes, other water treatments do not add an artificial slime coat.


Mark

and a bang up job you did mark as he looks in perfect condition (minus the tail fin of course)

Great job Mark,
There must of been alot of doubt 5 weeks ago when you saw his condition,but in fairness you took it upon yourself to get him over the line. Well done,the fish looks very healthy and seems happy.JohnH those rainbows are nice looking,you better make sure you have a nice spot for them or they will be in demand elsewhere!!

Gavin

he looked pretty good when i seen him on saturday mark. lets hope he keeps up the recovery

JohnH wrote:

Trust me - their new home is here, ready and waiting for them.

John

I have the adoption forms ready John, Madonna and Angelina asked about them but I said, No already spoken for:laugh:


Chees lads, I helped a little but this little guy is tough. Hows the Peppered getting along Craig?

Mark

i used to use api tonic salt, it helps the electrolitic slime coat or something, similar to stress coat, just a tonic in another form. marine salt keeps ich at bay, alot of freshwater nasties are salinophobes so a tiny amount of proper marine salt seems to be doing the trick

will do more research like you suggest about the dip method, it seems better then using a small q tank

A short video of the Bala that lost its tail some time back, auld feargal is well mended.






Mark

looking good, he has the proper bala shape (not like the skinny ones you find in the lfs)

what size is he?

joey wrote:

looking good, he has the proper bala shape (not like the skinny ones you find in the lfs)

what size is he?

He's about 6", got him at 2", still a fair bit to grow yet. Only took 4 5 months to grow this size munching on crickets mainly.


Mark

yeah mine were 3" and in a year they got to 9". peas, shrimp and frozen foods as well as hikari pellets got them that size, and they coloured up a deep silver. they are buggers to catch tho, spent over an hour trying to catch 4 to trade in! do you have just the one?

joey wrote:

yeah mine were 3" and in a year they got to 9". peas, shrimp and frozen foods as well as hikari pellets got them that size, and they coloured up a deep silver. they are buggers to catch tho, spent over an hour trying to catch 4 to trade in! do you have just the one?

Yeah just the one, don't have space for more, especially when they grow, great fish but I guess not too popular as they are quite common. Brilliant to watch though and the sound of the smacking as they eat is just bad manners:)

Mark

Good job on the recovery.

I added some female Glowlight Tetra's to my tank last week and I since noticed one of my Cardinal's has had most of it's fins and tail ripped to shreds. It's still moving about as normal and feeding so I'm hoping it will make a full recovery.

What size tank have you got there?

doreilly wrote:

Good job on the recovery.

I added some female Glowlight Tetra's to my tank last week and I since noticed one of my Cardinal's has had most of it's fins and tail ripped to shreds. It's still moving about as normal and feeding so I'm hoping it will make a full recovery.

What size tank have you got there?

Its a Vision 450. I had 6 Emperor Tetra in my Tetra tank with many others, when three died over time the rest of the Emperor started attacking the others so I moved em in with my Ancistrus, it was that or Giant Upside down Asian catfood:) They mainly attacked Black Neon and Glowlight tetras.

Once the offenders are sorted out the fins heal in no time

Mark

even with 2 10" leporinus, when there were odd fins nipped at they would heal back in a week or 2. i'd say that easylife stuff you use does the world of good, mark.

bala's are one very lovely big fish, if i wasn't planting this big tank and changing the stock i'd have kept them. they are the only fish the wife actually liked! and the clicking is funny, especially when they do it in the corner and belt the stones off the glass. clown loaches clicks are cool too, as they bury their fat faces into corguette...

joey wrote:

even with 2 10" leporinus, when there were odd fins nipped at they would heal back in a week or 2. i'd say that easylife stuff you use does the world of good, mark.

bala's are one very lovely big fish, if i wasn't planting this big tank and changing the stock i'd have kept them. they are the only fish the wife actually liked! and the clicking is funny, especially when they do it in the corner and belt the stones off the glass. clown loaches clicks are cool too, as they bury their fat faces into corguette...

I find Serpae terrible nippers especially in small number groups, seen em stalk an Altum Angel and keep nipping its fins, of course moved the Angel.

The Bala, constantly munches the Riccia in my tank, do they eat this? or is he mooching flake fragments as he seems to spit some Riccia out, though he does theis when eating flake too. The bala has sussed grabbing a variety wafer and sucking on it, looks as though he is sucking on it until it is small or soft enough to swallow, amusing interesting lively fish indeed.

Lately lotsof jaw locking going on in the loach tank since adding 6 new additions, 3 lare Clowns now have to establish the pecking order with the existing bigguns, lots or argy bargy going on:)


mark

yeah i posted a vid of the beatings 2 of my loaches were giving each other it looks very vicious.
dont know if it was purely the balas but alot of greenery went missing, frogbit being one but it only ever seemed the sharks were going for the floating pellets not the plants