mr. algae is our big chinese algae eater. He was fine the night before last, but when i looked at him last night he has pinecone scales

He seems fine in every other way, but his scales look awful. He's in a 100l tank, other fish are fine (guppies, rainbows etc), nothing has changed recently. I have a spare 3 foot with just plants in it, should i move him to there? Its a bit warmer than his tank, 28 compared to 26.

Should i try to feed him some peas in case he's bloated? He does look pretty round. Or dose the water with something?

Any help appreciated, he's our favourite fishy and the biggest at 12cm.

maybe he has just realised his name is mr algae & he is now depressed

from the info i'm not sure anyone could help, there doesn't seem to be anything specific. i can't hurt to put him in the other tank IMO, i would give it a go & see what happens. good luck with him.

Pinecone scales is not a good sign it is generally called dropsy but can be caused by any number of things, I have managed to "treat" the fish before using antibiotics and I say "treat" because the fish usually don't last long due to internal damage.. Antibiotics are a guess because without knowing exactly what is causing it you have no idea what to treat it with so you could be wasting your time, or the swelling could be caused by an organ failure etc which is fatal.

Best bet would be to move the fish to another tank or bucket etc and lots of water changes maybe some salt and furan if you have some, but if it is dropsy I wouldn't hold much hope for the fishes recovery sorry to say

I had an algae eater do this once (and a BN) and they both exploded in the end

Never worked out what was wrong and all other fish were fine :-?

Sometimes they will get a pinecone effect due to the amnount they are swelling, rather than dropsy. If dropsy, the pinecone effect will be all over the fish, including along the top. If swelling for another reason it will mainly be the stomach area only.

Try feeding cokked, shelled pea or giving it an Epsom salt bath in case it has a blockage.

he doesn't eat much, i'm sure he hasn't pigged out to cause it. Seems to be all over him but its hard to see since he shoots into his house whenever i try to look. I'll move him to the empty tank and put some salt and peas in, and see if that helps. Spare tank is sparkling clean and well planted though, i just use it to pull water out for the bettas, so should be healthy for him. Hope he's ok

Hi twinkles, sorry to hear about your fish. Pretty sure that he has dropsy, as others have mentioned. I've had quite a few fighters go down with it before (they are prone to it in my experience), so have done some research. I found out that dropsy is a symptom of kidney failure (which could be caused by any number of things) – because fluids in the fish's body are not being expelled properly by the kidneys, it swells up and scales stick out giving the 'pinecone' look.

Unfortunately, once the scales are up, it usually means that internal damage is pretty far advanced and so any treatment (if you do manage to figure out what has actually caused the dropsy) is too late. If you catch it early, people say that it can be treated - mostly the assumption is that it's some kind of internal bacterial thing and so they treat it with antibiotics (like Furan). I've never managed to save any of mine unfortunately.

Apparently kidney failure is very painful for a fish, so if he doesn't show any signs of responding to treatment after a couple of days, it would probably be best, imo, to euthanise him if you can bear it.

Well here's some good news

After a few days in the bare tank the heater i was using for it failed, so i had to put him back in his own tank. A couple of days after that I went to see how he was getting on, and he looked fine! Been a few days now and he looks perfectly normal, his scales can't be seen, his tummy isn't bloated, and he's destroying the tank again which he'd stopped while looking sick. So I think its safe to say that whatever was wrong with him probably wasn't dropsy, and he should be ok now

No idea what fixed him, he probably got better himself, but he wasn't fed for the whole time he looked sick except for what algae he ate. He's never been keen on much food though so i don't think that made a difference.

Anyway i'm glad he's looking better

hey that's good news, good on yah mate :bounce:

That's fantastic! :bounce: