Injured Fish

Hi I was just wondering has anyone ever experienced a heater burn on one of their fish , I have a blue cobalt discus who managed to burn himself on the heater in my hospital tank, he was just about on full recovery from fin rot after picking him up. When he managed to nestle alongside the heater and burn his side. I know my fault really for not having a heater cover but the tank was set up in a bit of a hurry after my original heater failed I was meaning to get a cover for the heater but unfortunatly its too late now.
So any help would be great on this one! Currently i'm using methylenne blue as an antiseptic but anymore experienced advise would be most welcome. This trauma has seriously affected his feeding habits too, so i'm very worried about his fate and the possibility of other problems arising from the burn.

I don't know anything about discus but I had a clown loach burn its back in the same manner.

I did nothing to be honest just kept the water clean and it healed completely in about 2-3 weeks.

get Indiam almond leaves. Best antiseptic for discus, bettas and a whole load of otehr fish. Is the fish still eating? Could you please post a picture just to get an idea how badly it is burned?

I don't know anything about discus but I had a clown loach burn its back in the same manner.

I did nothing to be honest just kept the water clean and it healed completely in about 2-3 weeks.

My advice would be the same as this.I had a catfish with a huge gaping hole in its side,caused by a heater burn.I put it into a hispital tank alone,with the lights out.About 6 days later after very minimal feeding it was well on the way to full fitness.Maybe ths was just pure luck but there is no substitute for clean water and no stress.

Best of luck btw!

Thanks all,

But I have failed on this one , he has passed on to fishy heaven.

Hi, I'm new to all this - site and fish alike!

I have a little silver shark who has a bloody looking area behind one fin. Otherwise he looks healthy and happy. Should I be doing anything with him or for him?

Hello and welcome.

To help you we really need to know a little bit more. For a start is this a new fish you got recently? Is the mark like a wound or a red patch, like blood behind the scales? What size is the fish and what are the tanks mates?

Very helpful also would be what size the tank is?
What are your water parameters, pH Nitrate, Nitrite, Ammonia & temp? (If you don't have a test kit, your local fish shop should be able to test your water for you, but you should consider getting one)
How long is the tank running?

Give as much info as you can and we will try to help.

Thanks Daragh. I'll answer as much as I can.

I have this fish about a month. He's about 2 ins long. He was in a 40l tank, but two weeks ago I upgraded to a 260l tank and moved him to it. It's a community tank with mostly tetras, mollys, gouramis, a couple of angel fish, one siamese fighting fish, and two tiger barbs.

The bloody area looks as if his fin is half hanging off.

I bought a test strip kit and the water results appear to be fine. That saying, the water is still cloudy even though I did a partial water change and added one of those new tank filter aid treatments last night.

Just about all of my old stock remain healthy, but some newer fish have died.

If it looks like his fin is haning off it is most likely an injury, do you still have the 40 litre tank, could you remove him to it, it would be cheaper to treat 40 litres of water than 260. Ideally we would need to see a photo of the injury, but if you can't get that I suggest you treat with an anti fungus, anti bacterial treatment like Melafix, or any or similar, your local fish shop should be able to help you there.

When you changed to the 260, how did you cycle the tank? Search for cycle or cycling on here if you need to know more. If you just added water and heated it up, then added fish I suspect your tank is cloudy because it was not fully cycled, adding the new tank start up stuff last night would be a bit late. You may have more problems coming down the line if the filter was new and not properly run in first.

Let us know and we can see what you should do next.

Thank you. I'll try get a shark pic.

I set up the new tank and left it for maybe 2 days before adding the old stock fish from the 40l tank. I had planned to leave it longer before adding them but I was under pressure from my little nephew to give him the smaller tank. Guess that answers your question about that tank, too

SabrinaSummerville wrote:

I set up the new tank and left it for maybe 2 days before adding the old stock fish from the 40l tank.

Ouch! It takes about a month to cycle a tank naturally, the usual way to speed up the process is to take some of the dirty filter media from the original tank and put it in the new one, that way the bacteria will spread to the new filter media and get it up and running much quicker.

You mentioned you got a test kit and the results were ok, can you tell us the readings? I would expect ammonia to be very high which is very harmful to fish. The reading should ideally be 0.

Now that you are in this position what's the best thing to do? Anyone else here got any suggestions ?? If not I think you are going to have to do a large water change about 30% immediately and about 10 - 15% a day until the tank is cycled. The water changes are to keep the levels of Ammonia and Nitrite in the water down, however doing water changes slows up the time it takes for the filter to get up to speed. It may take and extra couple of weeks.

There are products you can add that may help, but I have not used them, so hopefully someone here will give you a name. The filter treatment you added should help, but as the tank was already running 2 weeks you may need to add more, especially with frequent water changes.

Make sure when doing water changes to use water that is similar temp, not too cold and also use a dechlorinator to remove chlorine from the water which is harmful to fish and also kills the filter bacteria, whcih you definitely do not want to do. (That's way you should never wash filter media in tap water, only tank water.)

Hope this helps a bit, someone else may have a better suggestion. Whatever you do, don't give up.

OK Sabrina I think you are a very short time away from a horrible catastropy.
However you are in some luck as the ammount of water you have is going to work in your favour. It takes longer to pollute more water.

Please let us know exactly what size/species/ammount of fish you have.

What kind of tank did you buy and exactly what type of filter have you got.
(i.e. if its a Jewel Rio 240 with the standard Jewel internal filter).

In my opinion you will need to follow the advice already given and start those water changes (to reduce pollutants). You have a big tank now, go out and buy yourself a plastic bucket, and a gravel vac (ask in the fish shop) will be invaluable (get one with an automatic or hand pump starter). Use this bucket only for fish water, never for house cleaning. You will use this bucket for all the good stuff, taking water out of the tank, washing out the filter media in that tank water(at least every month), and filling with fresh water.

Where are you based?
You might be able to get a nice bit of dirty filter media from a forum member.
This will help you cycle the filter and keep your fish alive.
If you're anywhere near Rush I'll give you some.

Gotta move quickly girl, your fish might be on borrowed time, especially if they are already dying.

That's a great help, thanks. I had a feeling I was doing the wrong thing leaving it just two days but it was hard to resist the little nephew and his pleas for the other tank.

I won't give up, don't worry. I love this new hobby and sometimes spend hours just sitting by the aquarium watching the fish.

I'm in Waterford, far from Rush I'm afraid.

I have a Juwel 260 with standard Juwel filter.

The tank did settle down after a few days but it was when I added new fish that it started to go milky.

The nitrate and nitrite readings from the strip test were fine but I have now bought a more sophisticated test kit and will do a full test tonight, giving you all the readings.

Hi Sabrina,
welcome to the forum. Red patches generally are bacterial infections. Does the red patch appear under the skin or is it an open wound? If it is under the skin it's an internal bacterial infection. Melafix is Ok if it is an open wound since it will act as an antiseptic but very little use if it is internal. Try something like EsHA2000 or JBL and Tetra also do some excellent products against internal infections. Fins and Things in Midleton carry the JBL range and MAXI Zoo in Ballincollig do the Tetra stuff
Holger

It looks like an open wound to me.

Tonight I'll do a full inventory of my fish and a full water test and report results.

Thank you all!

@ Sabrina,
get EsHa 2000 since you are not entirely sure .IMO best broadband medication available. It will treat a wide variety of ailments and has absolutely no effect on your filter bacteria which is good news. Just remember to remove any carbon from your filter or it will not matter what medication you add.
Melafix gets great reviews in PFK but personally I have no faith in it. I suppose PFK knows what side their bread is buttered on.
By the way, any decent fishshops in Waterford?

Holger

We have a couple of fish shops in Waterford. There's a very new one recently opened called Petmania on the main Waterford/Tramore road beside Smiths toy store. They're still teething I feel but have helpful and interested staff.

There's a garden centre about four miles from town just off the main Waterford/Dunmore East road. It's called McGuires and they have one guy called Noel who is very knowledgeable about fish. I would think that they have a more varied stock than Petmania. They also have a very good pond stock which petmania don't, similarly with tropical plants.

Last weekend I paid a visit to Hennessy's garden centre in Kilkenny who claim to be the largest in Ireland.

My current favourite is McGuires.

Time for a trip to Tramore beach, I think. Load off the kids and darling wife on the beach and check out the shops. Are they open Sundays?

I don't know where you are based in Waterford but Fins and Things in Midleton shouldn't be too far for you. Glen, the owner, is in the middle of expanding his shop and just moved to a bigger premises. Well worth the trip.

You might also be interested in joining the Southern Aquarists Society. We have just set up the society four months ago and are always looking for new members of all levels of experience.
We are meeting once a month in Limerick. The next meeting is on the 17th of this month. If you are interested or want more info sent me, RichardBunn or Valerie here on the forum a PM and we will be more than happy to answer all your questions.

Cheers
Holger

Yes, the shops are open on Sundays and the kids would have a ball in Tramore:)

I'd like to join the Southern club but Limerick is a 3 hour drive from Waterford so I imagine I wouldn't make too many meetings. That saying, I'll certainly get the details from you.

Midleton would be a lovely Sunday day trip as long as I can persuade the family to bypass the jameson distillery

Another question (all in the one thread 'till I get used to the forum here) - how do these infections get into tanks in the first place? I had my 40l tank for a few months without a single fungus. Tonight I took a look at it in my nephew's house and there's a variety of fungus to include white spot, black hair algae, fin rot.....there wasn't a sign of any of them two days ago!

OK, trying to attach shark pic here - if I manage you will even see the red on his little fin.

Since your old tank was stripped down it is now suffering from New tank Syndrom.
Go down to your nearest petshop and ask them to squeeze some bio media into a fish bag, dirt and all.
Tell him/her to bag it like they were bagging a fish.
Pour this straight into your tank.
You tank will remain dirty for almost a day but it will give your filter a major kick start.

Wait and see if the red mark/wound gets any better. If not catch the fish and dab some Meth blue on the wound.
Keep us posted.
By the way. Welcome to the forum.

@Sabrina,
to answer your question how diseases get into a tank.
Fish and I mean any fish will carry pathogens on and in it. Once your water quality is fine these pathogens are latent and the fish's immune system can deal with them and diseases will not break out. As the lads already have pointed out you suffer from new tank syndrom. The fish are stressed and their immune system cannot handle the pathogens anymore giving them the chance to multiply and an outbreak of a or more diseases occurs.
The vast majority of diseases can be contributed to bad water quality.

Black hair algae are a result of several factors. Bad lighting, wrong light spectrum, too much nitrate, etc. Spores are either already in the water or are airborne.

Holger

PS. Club meetings are only once a month. It's a two hour drive from Cork as well but well worth thr trip. Georgina on the forum is from the Cork/Waterford border. You could car pool. Send her a pm, I'm sure she wouldn't mind

The good news is that my own big tank has started to clear.

This morning I am going to take myself off to Petmania and get Meth Blue for my shark plus a barrage of treatments for the Nephew's little tank.

I couldn't load my shark pic as the dimensions were too large and I don't know how to resize it. I may load it on another site and post a link later.

Don't go mad buying drugs for this and drugs for that, you will waste a whole lot of money.
Only buy a dechlorinator for now.
First rule of fish keeping: 'Look after the water and the fish will look after themselves'.

Keep the water clean with changes and get some dirty media to start your filter you can do what Anto said and just pour all the dirt into the tank directly or you can get some nice manky sponge and put IT into your filter. I prefer the dirty sponge method, its cleaner than dirtying the tank water.

Make sure your nephew only puts 2 or 3 fish into his tank for the first 4 weeks and teach him to change 1/4 of the water every week.

Ok, before you catch your bala shark and dab methylene blue on the wound and further stress the fish I would advise to treat the whole tank with either Esha 2000 or some other broadband medication available in your area. Stay away from Interpet or King British medication. IMO worse than useless.
Personally, I would not catch the fish. You could make the injury worse than it already is. Dabbing with methylene blue has only a short term effect. Also by by dabbibgf the wound you could make it worse as well. Once your water parameters are OK the wound should heal by itself. Of course this is different if it is an internal infection. dabbing with methylene blue will do nothing for the fish.

Holger

First of all, welcome to the site.It is full of very experienced and knowledgable people.

It is clear that you have jumped into setting up your new tank very quickly and have had problems. Don't be embarrased , it has happened to the best of us, the key thing is to learn from other peoples mistakes. The key to fishkeeping is to keep it simple to start with and to be very very patient.

I was in Tramore last weekend and took a trip into that shop, the tanks were clean and looked well looked after, no dead fish. I was a bit dubious about some of the tankmates that were put together but that is neither here nor there.

As mentioned before, you need to get some dirty filter media and gunk it into your tank to boost the filter, i'd also be keeping an eye on the nephews tank or he'll lose interest very quickly.

I disagree with Holger.
Meth Blue will help against any infection spreading.
It might be an old and dated system but it still works
as good today as it always has. I would still only usse it
if you think the open wound has not shown any improvement.

Have to agree with Anthony on this one i used meth blue about 2 weeks ago on my severums 1 had a mark on its head and the wound cleared up within 48 hours without any further treatment and no problems since.

Up to date report - no dead fish in a couple of days; water starting to clear but still painfully cloudy; shark wound healing on its own:)

I bought an API Master test Kit and went to use it this morning but unfortunately I can't get the tops off the bottles, plus one of the Nitrate test bottles was leaking.

I therefore tried another strip test and the results are as follows:-
Nitrate an Nitrite - 0
Ph - 7.5
GH - 180
KH - 240

Nitrate, Nitrite and Ph I understand and appear to be within perfect range; I don't know about the other two though.