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A contagious disease or just old age?

Matt Warner

Matt Warner

Member
Joined
25 Jul 2011
Messages
738
Location
Worcester
Hi all, I've been a little concerned about my fish in my 125l planted rio. I have a mix of shoals of tetras and rasboras mainly. Over the last 12 months I have lost about 4 fish of different species. They have all puffed up like a balloon and had protruding scales about a month before they die. I have done nothing different in this tank which may be causing it. I feed a varied mix of frozen and flake foods. It does seem to be happening to the fish I have had the longest (about 2 and a half years), so my theory was that the fish were getting old and their organs were failing and causing the dropsy condition. I just wanted you guys opinions it would be very much appreciated. Is dropsy a common cause of death in older fish?
Cheers
 
It's just really pissing me off. I think everything is fine for a few months then another fish gets it. Then it happens again a few months later. It's not as though I don't keep it clean as I do a 50% water change every week and clean the filters every few months. I just don't get what's going wrong. CO2 is fine as drop checker is green, plants grow like weeds and all fish seem active and happy. I just get at least one very few months dying of dropsy!
 
Didnt someone mention a potential cause as being fish ingesting frozen food before properly thawed? I could be completely off the mark.

If you keep it clean, then Im at a loss as to your problem. You don't find it happens when you've introduced new fauna?
 
Hi whitey, no mate it just happens randomly. I always run warm water over the frozen food first so it's defrosted thoroughly. The only thing I don't do is vac the gravel as I can't get to any of it, but I don't think this is the problem. I guess I'm going to have to put it down to old age in the fish. Thanks for the suggestions
 
I totally agree with Sanj – it seems to be bacterial and something that your fish fight successfully off when younger but cannot cope with when reaching a certain age... One thing on the life span – if you buy from an LFS, you never know how old your fish really are, so all the fish you lost maybe just reached about their “final period” and succumbed to the bacteria. I don’t know what I would do if I were you. Try an anti-bacterial treatment “just in case”? or leave things as they are? Thinking about it, I would probably try a course of some anti-bacterial treatment at half dose and repeat it in a couple of months later (recording the dates of treatment and fish deaths if any...) I have said in another post that I used Interpet’s Anti Internal Bacteria treatment which did not affect the Amanos and I also used it in a separate betta tank where I placed a betta rescued from a shop (he was ill, I treated him, and he lived for close to 2 years afterwards – good result). Just a thought – it is difficult to be 100% sure...
 
Thanks Nat. I think I'm just going to see what happens and if it happens one more time I may try an anti bacterial treatment. I just don't want to weaken the fish any more by using treatments if it isn't necessary. I think if something was seriously wrong then I would be losing a lot of fish in a very short period of time. I can't see that it's a water quality problem, as this tank ha been running well over two years now! It's is very heavily planted and has loads of filtration capacity. Thanks again for the tips.
 
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