Please help me save my dear little fish.

[Brookey25]

Hi,

My name's Brooke and I'm new to this site. I have previously kept fish, but not for a couple of years now.

Recently and on seperate occasions, I adopted 2 very sick fish from the tank in our workplace - as they have absolutely NO idea how to take care of fish.. and I just couldn't watch these dear little things suffer anymore.

The first fish I named "Mr Fish" (lame I know, but it just caught on..). Mr Fish lives in a 9.5 litre tank. When I took him home, he had chronic Bacterial Septicemia which had led to internal bleeding. I treated him with Furan 2 and he's almost entirely healthy - aside from a very small millimetre wide white patch left on his tummy, which I have given him 2 courses of Melofix for.. but I am not too worried about this.. as he's almost 100% healthy now and I keep a close eye on that patch. I'm just trying to give him a break from the horrible medication he'd been on. Mr Fish lives in a 9.5 litre medicine tank with only a pump and airstone, as I wasn't sure whether he would survive. But I'm on the look for a new tank now.

I was lucky to have saved Mr Fish from what I thought was certain death.. but I haven't had as much luck with my new fish - "Patch". Patch is about 1 year old, an orange Fantail with beautiful long fins and some small black markings (possibly crossed with another type of fish).

I adopted Patch after I had regularly seen him in the tank at work, in odd positions - sitting on his tail. He has lost most of his scales and is the most skittish fish I have ever seen in my life! In case you're wondering - I have seperate tanks and equipment for both of them to avoid cross-infection. Patch lives in quite a big tank, but only 14 litres of water is in the tank at this stage because I've been medicating. He has a filter, pump and airstone.

I was surprised how well he handled the move to my house, as he perked up straight away.. and for the first week - he was very erratic and hyperractive.. continuously swimming back and fourth as if he had endless energy (this is not behaviour I had seen with him at work). If someone came too close to the tank, or he was startled in any way, he would immediately retreat to the corner of the tank and begin shallow breathing.. and it would take about half an hour for him to recover before he began swimming around crazily again.

The first week I got Patch, I had him on a course of Melofix, but mistakenly hadn't taken out the activated Carbon, so this doesn't really count.

When I went to clean out the tank after his 7 day course, I couldn't get the filter to start back up and this meant I spent much more time with my hands in the tank than I would've usually.. when water changes are usually just such a quick in-and-out job.

The next morning, his fins were absolutely covered in white spot. So I bought some trusty old Meth Blue and gave him only 9 drops for the 14 litres of water he lives in.

I left him in the Meth Blue for 24 hours, and during that time, he'd begun standing on his tail again.. he was spending time at the bottom of the tank.. breathing fast and then gasping so bad, I thought he was going to die.

My family and I thought he would die and so I stood 7 litres of water for half an hour, and then did a water change (I know this was wrong, but this is how terrible he looked). Since then, he has been lying on the bottom of the tank, opening and closing his mouth extremely fast and his gils are barely (if at all) moving.

He does try to swim up, but it seems that he is so weak, he can't even hold himself up in the water. His top fin is permanently down and remains covered in white spots, as does the rest of his fins. But this has improved a lot from what it was. Part of his tail has also gone red and has bloody streaks through it. I've been told this is from poor water quality.

When I did the water change, I put Stress Zyme, Stress Coat, and the recommended dosage of Rocksalt in the water. I've been feeding him peas without the skin, defrosted bloodworm, sinking granules... but he isn't even eating now.

I suspect he may be braindamaged now? He's been like this for 4 days constantly. I have left him alone, thinking that any drugs would push him over the edge.. and thought the quiet time might help him recover.

I have spoken to both petshops here, and they tell me I've done everything possible - but I just don't want to give up on the little guy yet.

I have spent hundreds on all my fish equipment, but have yet to buy an Ammonia or Nitrates Kit. I had the petshop test these for me. Patch's nitrates and ammonia were fine, but his PH was 8+. I will be using PH Down after a water change I will do tomorrow.

Mr Fish (has no filter). and his nitrates and ammonia were apparently off the charts. Mr Fish has black edged fins and that small white patch of Septicemia, but is in otherwise perfect health.

I really feel like all this time, effort, money and love I've given these fish has caused them more harm.

If you have ANY ideas on what I can do for Patch to save his life - I'd love to hear from you.

Thank you for reading & I'm sorry this has been so long!

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

[HaNs]

Id "put him down" if it was me. Id rather kill a fish than let it suffer. I know its not that easy when your attached.

You could keep medicating him and keep the water clean and see if he comes back to life.

You have done well so far.

[jim r]

NZ water in most areas is around 7.2ph so I would forget the ph up/down if your tap water is around the same, daily water changes are a must and you may have to treat the white spot again. Raise the temp to a minimum of 19C to help combat the whitespot.

[whetu]

Hi Brooke, what part of NZ do you live in?

Sorry I can't help with advice for Patch or Mr Fish, but I just wanted to say good on you for giving it a go. Too many people treat fish as some kind of decorative object instead of a living animal, so these two are lucky to find someone who cares.

[Brookey25]

Thank you so much for your replies. I really appreciate you taking the time to read my extremely long email. But I thought it best that I give you as much information as possible.

The sad thing is that I because I've adopted these fish while they're sick, I can only imagine what they must've been through previously - especially Patch. I suspect he's been transferred to numerous diseased tank in his short little life.. and his immune system is just worn thin.

Anyway, to answer your question HANS, I live in Taranaki, North Island.

I did a 50% water change for both fish tonight. I know that Mr Fish's only problem at this stage is the fact I don't have the proper equipment for him i.e. a filter - but otherwise he's almost 100% healthy. Patch handled the water change reasonably well.. he's still hanging in there.. but I was shocked to discover his tank is just FULL of old food that I had thought he'd eaten.. but really it's just disappeared under the rocks over the past week. Tomorrow I will have to do another water change to get rid of the rest of it. He can't live like this. This goes to show though, that he hasn't been eating for over a week now. I only feed him small amounts, but it sure builds up when it's not consumed.

He remains on the bottom of the tank, breathing very fast, with small but rapid gill movements. The White Spot has improved dramatically on it's own. I know that I need to be using the Meth Blue for this, but I'm just worried about him being so weak at the moment and not being able to handle it. I suspect he has much more going on internally than just the White Spot I can see.

I really hope I'm doing everything possible. I'm taking both fish's water to the pet store tomorrow for the usual round of tests to see if things have improved.

Thanks again for your help.

[Caper]

How are the fish? Update?

Caper

[Brookey25]

Caper,

To give you an update on what's happened with my fish.

Mr Fish is fine, and I'll be putting in an order for a 75 litre tank for him this week..

The day after posting on here, Patch came out in Whitespot again, this time worse than ever. I spent time researching exactly what White Spot is.. and it turns out I was wrong to try and wait for him to get some strength back.. I regret now I didn't just treat him earlier.

So I treated him with Meth Blue Tonic.. double & triple checked the dosage amount so as to be sure I wasn't giving him any more than he needs. He seemed to be improving.. swimming around more.. but still hadn't eaten. On the 3rd day of treatment (as per the instructions), I did a water change and added some more tonic. The next few days he went downhill.. but not because of the Meth Blue. He didn't seem to be responding to the treatment at all.. the White Spot just wasn't letting up. Then I noticed his tail had turned red.. just over a day.. and one of the edges was falling off. I called both local pet shops and they assured me this was a fungal infection and that the tonic would take care of this also. I tried not to worry.

The next day he'd gone downhill even further, with his whole tail covered in blood-red streaks. By the time I'd gotten home from work that night, he had barely any tail left.. it was only HALF the length it was.. and he had continued to keep it wedged up against the filter (as he'd been doing all week. I assumed because of the Itch at first).

The next day, I noticed he had some fluffy fungus sort of hanging off his body.. and some of it was floating around in the water and on his tail..... I really didn't know how many more diseases this poor little fish could possibly harbour all at the same time. I owned fish for years, but never saw anything like this. This fish must've had ZERO immunity left.

I was really confused, helpless and torn as to what to do. He had shown signs he was dying for the past week.. gasping for air on the bottom.. sitting in wierd vertical positions.. standing on his tail. But occasionally, he'd still swim around the tank a bit.. then go back onto the bottom.. and I told myself maybe he was just resting...

I just hoped that if he was dying, that it would just happen quickly.. but I wanted to give him the best chance possible at surviving.. so I did my best to be patient.

I got up one morning, towards the end of the 7 day course of tonic.. and he was starting to go belly up.. then he would correct himself.. but had stopped swimming around and his breathing was irregular. He was only a day away from death.. I could see then that I'd been far too optimistic.. and the best thing I could do was put him out of his misery. So with trembling hands and tears streaming down my face, I put him into a little ziplock bad and slipped him into the freezer.

I'd spent all morning calling vets to ask for the best way to euthinaze fish (never having to do it before).. and they told me to either put him in the freezer, or chop off his head.. but I knew I couldn't do the latter.

It was a horrible experience.. but I feel glad that at least I gave him a chance at life.. whereas if I hadn't of saved him from that diseased tank, he would've ended up being flushed.

[lmsmith]

Aw, that's so sad for you! At least you know you did your very best for him.

[Caper]

Glad to hear Mr. Fish is doing well and so sorry to hear about Patch. At least you tried your best, it's probably as you said his immune system was just so weak. You gave him every chance possible more than what some people would do.

Caper