Help with cure tank of Dropsy

[Frank Cowherd]

Sorry to get into this discussion late, but I have found that I get fish with dropsy in tanks that are being overfed. The water may look good, but there is excess food in the tank. If I do water changes including gravel cleaning on a routine basis, I do not get dropsy in any of the tanks.

I really do not like to use any medications in large tanks. If you are going to treat a fish with dropsy, do it in a small tank to which you have moved the fish with dropsy. You not only use much less medication, you can monitor the infected fish much better. Do not worry about the other fish in the display tank. Dropsy is not a disease that is easily transmitted to other fish. If they do not show signs of dropsy, they likely do not have it.

I have a theory about how dropsy gets to affect a particular fish. If there is excess food, not mulm, but food, on the bottom or in the gravel, there will be a high concentration of bacteria around it. When the lights are turned off at night, fish actually go to sleep or stupor with the lights off. Usually this means they settle to the bottom of the tank and do not move much during the night. If they happen to rest over the excess food, they are essentially bathing themselves in a high concentration of bacteria. Under the right, but certainly undefined circumstances, this bath leads to dropsy in the unfortunate fish which napped in the bacterial bath.
This theory not only explains how an individual fish gets dropsy, but also why most other fish do not, and perhaps, if the conditions are not corrected, why others in the same tank get dropsy at a later date.
Frank

 

[Lively]

Your theory makes sense, Frank. I tend to underfeed my fish - drives my hubby mad that I'll skip a day or two of feeding or just feed once a day for awhile, and other times I'll feed 4-5 times a day in smaller amounts. My theory is, in the wild they don't get regular feeding. I've never had any serious health issues with my fish and I do think it is partly because of the way I feed them.

 

[maddog10]

MOST fish can survive 2 weeks without being fed, although I would not push it that fair. 1 week is usually not a problem. Irregular feeding schedule makes sense to me.

 

[SubMariner]

Sorry to get into this discussion late, but I have found that I get fish with dropsy in tanks that are being overfed. The water may look good, but there is excess food in the tank. If I do water changes including gravel cleaning on a routine basis, I do not get dropsy in any of the tanks.

I really do not like to use any medications in large tanks. If you are going to treat a fish with dropsy, do it in a small tank to which you have moved the fish with dropsy. You not only use much less medication, you can monitor the infected fish much better. Do not worry about the other fish in the display tank. Dropsy is not a disease that is easily transmitted to other fish. If they do not show signs of dropsy, they likely do not have it.

I have a theory about how dropsy gets to affect a particular fish. If there is excess food, not mulm, but food, on the bottom or in the gravel, there will be a high concentration of bacteria around it. When the lights are turned off at night, fish actually go to sleep or stupor with the lights off. Usually this means they settle to the bottom of the tank and do not move much during the night. If they happen to rest over the excess food, they are essentially bathing themselves in a high concentration of bacteria. Under the right, but certainly undefined circumstances, this bath leads to dropsy in the unfortunate fish which napped in the bacterial bath.
This theory not only explains how an individual fish gets dropsy, but also why most other fish do not, and perhaps, if the conditions are not corrected, why others in the same tank get dropsy at a later date.
Frank

You're absolutely right Frank! I also believe that over feeding leads to high nitrate levels in the water and can cause fish to not only get sick, but for them to die due to a weak immune system. I find your perspective on the fish bathing itself on the bottom of the substrate fascinating and a eye opener. Thanx Frank!

Stacy, I don't know if you've read some of my past posts on feeding, but I always advocate a once a day diet plan. Having said that, I tend to train all of my adults,juvies including my fry to fast for a day maybe every 2 weeks or so. It helps their digestive track to clean out and for their immune system to kick in. The plus side is less water changes. Oh Yea!

That's why whenever I do a weekend getaway, I can now relax on my little vacation and not worry if my fish need food or not because I already know they can handle 2-3 days without food. I think I pushed it to 5 days, by then you'll notice a couple of the weak juvies begin to drop like flies. It's a learning tool

And it's good for them, plus I hardly ever have any casualties. Nevertheless, it's better than leaving a friend to feed your fish and to later find out he was over feeding them and they all died. I'm sure lots of us have heard that story.

Good Luck Prince,


Richard

P.S. Oh I forgot, always and I mean always do water changes before you go on vacation.

 

[crazyclowntang]

Frank, you just shed light on this topic. I once had dropsy, and for no particular reason I stopped feeding heavily and then WALA, never again did I get dropsy or major health complications. I think your theory might be onto something.

 

[fishmeds]

The way I have always told people to treat dropsy is a combination of doxycycline and kanamycin in the water. If the fish is still feeding, feed it the doxy dosed via food. You need to treat for 2-3 weeks and you should bump the temp up to 83-84. If you see both eyes swelling and as said the peeling scales, this is when it becomes difficult to cure.

Regarding the other fish, if you can feed them doxy and it is dropsy, they should be alright. The problem as mentioned earlier is this is not a very contageous disease and because of this, you need to check water parameters and consider the possibility of this being a different disease as pop-eye can occur from a boat load of causes and damage to the lateral line can also have multiple causes; the pine cone effect is not as much however.



For some reason I always confuse dropsy as a Ram's disease...they don't even begin with the same letter or rhyme, go figure, my mind may just be leaving me

 

[Prince]

The symptoms I find are loss of appetite, "pine coning", lethargy and self quarantining. The self quarantining is when the fish that is normally very active finds a corner at the top of the tank and just sits there.

 

[fishmeds]

The pine cone stage is bad, bad, bad. With loss of appetite, rehabilitating these fish will be next to impossible as you MUST get the antibiotic into the fish internally to have a prayer at this stage. Even if you can save the fish now, they often have internal damage which kills them in a short period of time. Sometimes, this can take a month to occur but the pinecone effect or damage to the lateral line means your fish have had terrible internal injury from the bloating and because of this, these fish will suffer the least when they are humealy euthanized (I realize it is not a happy thought but dropsy is a disease in which the fish suffers greatly).

As for the fish which have not shown the pine cone effect or lateral line damag, you can treat the water with doxycycline hyrdrochloride but the downside is it will completely destroy your bacterial bed and you should simply stop feeding all together to avoid an ammonia spike. With that said, you need to treat the water because while dropsy in itself is not very contageous, if a fish with dropsy dies in your main tank, as that fish begins to decompose, it can cause secondary infections including bacterial, viral, parasitic and fungal infections. I would treat with an antiparasitic agent as well and use the antibiotic and the parasitic agent for at least two weeks. Certain antibiotics also cure and prevent fungi including doxycycline, oxytetracycline, and erythromycin. Erythromycin is not the ideal antibiotic as it is designed primarily for gram positive bacteria which rarely infect fish with the exception of swim bladder infections which we obviously are not dealing with. Additionally, if your fish are getting dropsy, there is a cause of extreme stress which leaves them vulnerable to disease and ill health. Overall, you MUST address the CAUSE of this as it is 99% of the time enviornmental. Saving the maximum amount of fish may actually come from you using multiple quarantine tanks and breaking the fish up and providing each fish with as much water per fish as possible giving you some buffering capacity.

The symptoms I find are loss of appetite, "pine coning", lethargy and self quarantining. The self quarantining is when the fish that is normally very active finds a corner at the top of the tank and just sits there.

 

[Prince]

I have had enough. I lost another fish today to the same symptoms. I saw the fish two or three days ago and it was fine. Today when I get home from work the fish is so bloated and pine coned that even its eyes were bulging. I had to put the fish down. If Phil still take the other fish I am going to empty the tank and bleach the gravel. I don't want to lose any fish once I switch the tank over to all cichlids.

Fishmeds: will the doxycycline hyrdrochloride and kanamycin treatment work better in a fishless tank? It's a 55 gallon tank but with all of teh fish gone I can reduce the volume to 10 to 20 gallons and treat the whole tank.

 

[danger_chicken]

What are the water parameters?

 

[Frank Cowherd]

I can think of no other explanation than what I have already said.

But whatever you do make sure the gravel is cleaned at least weekly.

And perhaps change the type of food you are feeding. If what you are feeding is a rapid sinking pellet it may be getting to the bottom before most of it is eaten.

As for cloroxing the gravel, I would recommend removing the gravel and cloroxing it in batches in a 5-gallon bucket and cloroxing the empty tank by putting a gallon of water and a half cup of clorox and then use a wash rag or kitchen sponge to clean the sides -- use rubber gloves. Then rinse and drain and dry. Or rinse and then repeat with a gallon of water containing a cup of salt. The combination of clorox and salt treatments will kill more stuff than either alone. And drying the tank and gravel before reuse is an added precaution that can kill stuff in a dormant form.
If you need a better procedure than the above, then fill the aquarium with water and add about a quarter cup of clorox per gallon. Use some sort of pump or bubbler to stir the tank for at least a day. Then drain and rinse and rerinse and rerinse and then fill and then treat with declor. Treat the gravel separately or better throw it away and get new. This procedure will stand an chance of getting rid of even mycobacteria, the really bad stuff that even people can get. Usually the recommendation is to follow the clorox treatment with a wipe down of the tank and equipment with isopropanol. Then dry and let stand for a day and then put it back in service. Any gravel, rocks or porus materials like wood are discarded as they cannot effectively be cleaned.
But in the case of dropsy, usually just good water changes and gravel cleaning with a siphon lead to a cure for the remaining fish. SO clorox and isopropanol and salt and drying treatment should not really be necessary.

 

[Prince]

My tank readings via api master test kit
Ammonia, nitrates, nitrites all at 0ppm
PH 7.2-8
Phosphates 10.00ppm
GH 3 to 4
KH 3 to 4