I bought several Gourmis recently...

... of 7 I only have 4 left.

Symptoms: extreme wasting, skin looks rough (like potential skin infection possibly secondary infection).

They drop fast, it seems to take about 3 days to knock them over. I have one removed to a hospital tank currently treated with a combo treatment of: Acriflavin, Meth-Blue, Melachite Green, Quinine, & furan.

Yes all combined, yes marginal for overdose.

Fish feeding fine, which I'm taking as a good sign.

I have also used formalin which is currently out of the treatment. Still got the bug though which I'm sure came in with the same fish which are infected.

Anyone got any ideas?

What sort of gourami? Dwarf/threespot ect. If they are Dwarf then apparantly they are very susceptible to fungal infections, not too much you can do about it.

Dwarf

bummer

Yeah they are very delicate fish due to bad breeding, stress, bad water conditions can set of a case of fungal out break.

I've found with ours it is best to keep twice as many females to males, a heap of floating plants and hiding places and be very vigilant with water parameters.

Im not sure what you can do with your guys now but maybe a salt bath would help. Go to your LFS and see if they can help or maybe someone on here might have better advice.

I haven't tried salt but will... wasn't sure if it was a good idea with gourmis.

What dose rate do you use for salt?

No its fine for gouramis, I haven't salt bathed ours so Im not sure on the dosage. There should be some threads on here I think on salt bath dosages.

What are your parameters like? These are very sensitive fish. I am Shannons partner and we have 4 dwarfs with a suspected fungus.

You could actually be harming him/her with all that medication. Our dwarfs came down with their infections when we had to medicate our community tank with Whitespot Cure due to clown loaches. The cure contains melachite green, acriflavin and quinine. I have no idea which of these ingredients don't agree with them, but I suspect it's not the quinine, most likely it's the melachite green, but couldn't say for sure.

Two days ago, we put them in a 50 litre tank with a salt to water solution of about 1 tablespoon to 10 litres of water, then last night added two more tablespoons to our 50 litre tank taking it to 1 tablespoon to 7 litres. Today they look pretty good. One of our females had a 10mm gash-like wound in her side, which was red and swelled. Today the gash is white with a few less scales, but she looks a whole lot better! They have all shown marked improvement, so you could try a similar treatment, although if it is fungus, I would have thought the furan would take care of it. What exactly is in that by the way?

Anyway, I would stop the melachite green and acriflavin treatments immediately, based on my experience with them.

Good Luck,

Vapo.

I had the same kind of problems. Treated with alsort and finally got them looking ok only for it to come back a week later. I used Aquaflavine and Metronidazola and may be Furan 2. Haven't gotten any more since these passed away but they are good looking fish when they're ok but to much touble for me. Give me Discus anyday.

Wasting disease is also known as TB.

If they have that you can just about kiss (don't do that) your fish goodbye.

Separate from others as soon as noticed.

Alan 104

Go to here

http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/previo ... sc&start=0

and have a look at the photo in the second post.

Notice the front blue fish??

If you see them like this with those shrunken shoulders (???), give away any ideas that you can fatten it up.

I wouldn't buy any fish from that tank with one that looked like that.

Alan 104

affected fish did not survive.

Yes it looked like the blue fish but extremely wasted.

Those treatment ingredients sound familiar that is probably what caused the death in the finish... was a very nice fish the other which I brought in both died of wasting & bacterial skin infections. I haven't diagnosed the cause yet.

The disease hadn't been particularly noticeable when these fish arrived but the rate the disease progressed suggested it was bacterial. The infected fish went down pretty fast.

I have to wonder then about formalin, is it safe with gourmis? I know Corydoras & Bristlenose & Melanotaenia boesmani + Melanotaenia praecox can handle it at about a 65% strength dose.

I could do with treating the tank with a broad spectrum antibiotic & fungicide. Whats safe at full strength with a huge mixture of species that covers the works shy stripping down a tank which has been established for 18 months.

I tend to try to dose longer about 60% doserate bath treatment which usually works pretty well with a very mixed community tank. My biggest problem with disease treatment is that I'm not certain of which species disagree with which treatments it'd be nice to have a chart with that kind of info. Catfish all dose half strength & they'll be ok but I've never noticed a single diseased catfish excepting corydoras fry.

Tank temperature 26.4 for the main community tank.

Isolation tank for sick gourmis 28.0 celcius.

Its completely hopeless trying to catch fish also in the tank they're now in... far too much hard & soft cover for them with heaps of logs... I built a glass trap which lets me get most of the catfish eventually but bristlenose have no trouble escaping quickly even with a neck.

With the sump the tank is about 600 litres 4' x 2' 6" x 2' roughly.

I'd have quarantined the fish when they came in but for no empty tanks available.

I tend to lose fish in the plant cover in the tank this little red guy had been they were hiding mainly near the surface & I usually have to wait for a while to see the female she disappeared for a week at first.

I think that fish had had the disease for several days without me seeing it the gourmis seem to be delicate feeders compared with rainbows which strike, probable they also were simply outcompeted although I still have a very healthy female doing well & 2 tiny dwarf gourmis the red fish was approx 50mm in length these guys are about 15mm (the female about 40mm).