Fishkeeping: How To Treat Swim Bladder Disease

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.