Fish Health Care
How do I know if my fish is sick?
There are some indicators of fish health that are easy to spot; spots being one of them! If your fish looks like it has been sprinkled with salt, that's a bad thing, its got a parasite called "ick," typically; if your fish's eyes are cloudy, it could have a bacterial or fungal infection or some kind of irritation or injury to the eye; if the fins are frayed or clamped to their body, that's an indication that it the fish has got some kind of problem literally with the fin or something internal that's bothering it; if your fish is sluggish, loses appetite or has no appetite, that's the number one indicator; when you're feeding your fish, you want to be able to step back a little bit and pay attention; if you've got a fish that isn't being intimidated but doesn't want to eat and it was eating before, guarantee there's a problem with that fish, its sick, and you need to be looking for some secondary signs; eyes, fins, any kind of spots or bruises, lesions, irritations on the body.
Who will help my sick fish?
There are lots of resources available to you if you think you have a sick fish. There are a lot of books that have been written on it with great pictures and great descriptions and also effective medications. Always, the tried and true method is to describe the symptoms or take pictures of the symptoms and come into your local aquarist, your professional aquarist shop. They're also going to have medications there. Keep in mind, they're dealing with fish all day, every day. They've seen everything, so they probably know how to fix anything that you're going to come up with. And then you can go selectively online. Obviously, it's a great resource for a lot of things. The same is true about fish disease and cures for it. There is some disinformation out there, so you have to be careful with that, but if you use one or a combination of all those methods you'll probably find the best solution. Most things are curable, and some things simply aren't. That is true with every animal on the planet.
What are the most common diseases that affect fish?
The most common diseases that fish hobbyists are going to run into, and not in any particular order but probably ranked this way, would be Ich, fin and tail rot, bloat, swim bladder disease and then pop eye or cloudy eye. Those are probably the ones you are going to see more than anything else.
What is 'ick' and how do I treat it?
Ick is a parasite that bores into the body of the fish, and then releases its young or its eggs. It goes through this vicious cycle for about 18 days. It can be deadly, but also at the same time, it can be curable. A lot depends on how quickly you catch it. It literally looks like salt sprinkled on your fish; normally on its head, or its tails. It's typically caused by water temperature fluctuation, but occasionally also the water chemistry affects it. However, if water temperature fluctuation varies by greater than a degree, this has the potential to bring on ick a lot of times. The best way to cure it is to use a copper-based product in a fresh water system, or a system that doesn't have any invertebrates. Copper kills invertebrates, because ick's an invertebrate that's in fresh water. In salt water, you can use copper. We also like to drive the specific gravity down because inverts need a higher-specific gravity than fish. Fish can tolerate really low salinity levels, but inverts cannot. They also don't like high temperatures, but depending on how sensitive the fish is, how many fish have it, how valuable they are to you either personally or monetary, we'll use a combination of all those weapons in saltwater and even sometimes in fresh water, the temperature and the specific gravity, salt water only, and use of copper.
What is 'fin rot' and how do I treat it?
Fin rot is a bacterial or fungal infection that gradually eats away the fins of a fish. The infection makes the fins of the fish look tattered instead of looking straight and round. In order to treat fin rot you have to first identify the root cause of the problem otherwise whatever treatment or medication you provide will be of no effect. The treatment to fin rot involves maintaining the water chemistry, which is of paramount significance, and having consistent water temperature throughout. If you do that then the chances of curing a sick fish is great. After that, you can treat it with anti-biotics and pro-biotics such as tetracycline, metronidazole, super sulphur and T3. All of these are holistic methods of treatment.
What is 'swim bladder disease' and how do I treat it?
A swim bladder is what keeps the fish neutrally buoyant in the water. It doesn't float, it doesn't sink. Not all fish have them, most do. So when you see a fish kind of just floating through the water, that means it has got a swim bladder and it is functioning properly. Sometimes they will get infections in their swim bladder and that will cause them to literally capsize. They are still perfectly fine, they can eat, they can do everything, but they flip upside down or they kind of bounce off the bottom. You see this a lot of times in fancy goldfish for a lot of different reasons, mostly cross breeding and what have you. It's usually a blockage in their intestinal track which runs very close to the swim bladder that causes the problem in the first place. In other fish, it's just simply a bacterial infection or possibly even a fungal infection that's gotten into the swim bladder and you've got to get it out again using some kind of antibiotic. You can make sure that your water chemistry is good. It's kind of like if something makes you sick and then you go to the doctor and you get a cure for it or a medicine for it but you don't leave the germ area and you're still living in it, you're just going to keep getting sick. The same thing applies to the fish. You've got to get whatever the environmental problem is fixed in the first place then your medicine is going to be a lot more effective, instantly and in the long run.
What is 'cloudy eye' and how do I treat it?
Cloudy eye is the symptom that usually goes along with an opaqueing or really a clouding of the eye of a fish. It's really tough to figure out what exactly it is. For instance, whether it's a cancerous growth, a cataract type of situation, or whether a fish got injured fighting another fish. Fish always go for another fishes eyes when they fight so it might have got damaged. Whether the fish freaked out and panicked and ran into something and scratched it's eye, whether it's a bacterial infection, whether it's the beginning of pop-eye which is an infection way back behind the eye. So it's really one of the toughest one's to figure out. It's not super common, but it's common enough for you to need to know about it and there are a lot of different methods for trying to fix it; most are antibiotic based. Again make sure that your water chemistry is proper to begin with. Sometimes it's not curable at all, depending on what it is. Most of the time you're just going to find people to just give you some antibiotics. See what happens, let them run a course of two of those and hopefully it solves the problem.
What should I do if my fish is injured by another fish?
Typically, a fish when they get injured, the only way they get injured is by another fish attacking him or biting him or what have you. That'll typically happen during feeding time. What you have to determine is was it a one time occurrence? Kind of a warning shot across the battle if you will, or do you have a dominant fish that is taking down a sub-dominant fish. If that's the case it will not stop. That fish will take that fish out and I mean completely out. They're wild animals; they think like wild animals, they don't operate any other way. There's a sick fish or a weak fish, the strongest of the fish is going to see an opportunity for food, and it's going to take the fish out. So you got to take a determination how severe it is. And if that's the case, usually the indicator risk: will the lesser fish get to eat when you feed? And if it does not get to eat one of those two fish has to go because ultimately its going to end up in the demise of the weaker fish almost guaranteed.
What is a 'hospital' or 'quarantine' tank for fish?
A 'hospital' or 'quarantine' tank is a smaller staging area for your fish tank. It's a place where you put a new fish for observation before introducing it to the population of fish in the main tank. The reason for doing this is to check whether the fish has symptoms of any disease, as we don't want to leave a fish with a communicable disease into a tank that contain a shoal of fish, which might affect them too. In this case, you can isolate the fish by quarantining it, by providing a dose of anti-biotics or pro-bio tics and keep it under close observation.
How do I set up a hospital tank for my sick fish?
When you set up a hospital tank for sick fish, it doesn't have to be really big because it's not a permanent thing. I usually tell people ten gallons is great. If you can get up to 20, that's awesome. Usually I will put a lesser type of filtration in there, like a little corner filter or something like that, just so I can have some kind of biological processes going on. You can circumvent that by doing frequent water changes on it, but basically it's to have a heater in there so you can control the temperature. Bring it up or down if you want to use that as some medicinal purpose, and treat it like any other tank. I don't put substrate in it at all - no sand or gravel. Some people put sand. I just leave them as an empty tank, good oxygenation, possibly some filtration, and a heater. That's pretty much it.