Honey Gourami looks pitiful

Sadie

I have posted about my poor Honey Gourami in the past but she has started to look bad. I used her and her friend to cycle a 10 gal and Hope took poorly to the params. When I finally decided if she didn't pull out of it I was going to euthanize her, she all of the sudden decided to behave like a Gourami and eat and swim. Beau (for those soap opera viewers I did not name the male, my 12 year old niece did!!) has been getting more and more aggressive towards her and I figure it was her weak state, this past week I moved him to the other tank and put a male Platy in Hope's tank because he was getting beaten by the aggressive male Paty in the other tank.

Params have been normal for a couple of weeks now except for a small spike mid week after adding 3 Otos (down to 2 one died last night). I added an African Dwarf Frog 2 weeks ago. Current params are temp 75-76, ph 8, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, and nitrate 5. Last week I tripled the plant population.

She is behaving for the most part okay, she is a sluggish for a Gourami but for her she has been quite active especially after the removal of Beau and the addition of the Platy. She and the Platy have become close friends. Hope cleans his wound and his damaged side fin. they eat together and hang out a good bit.

She is eating well and shows interest in what I am doing but her physical appearance seems to be diminishing.

This is Hope and her friend. I know these pictures aren't good but it will give you an idea. I can't seem to get in any closer with my camera.



This is picture is also from today.



This picture was Hope a couple of weeks ago when she was starting to get her color back. If you look at the above compare to this one you can see how much she has thinned down and lost her color again.




Just for comparison this picture is Beau in the other tank. When he was in the other 10 gal he didn't look this vibrant or red, so part of it is lighting but you still can see how bad Hope looks compared to Beau.



Even though I know it is hard to tell males from female, I believe I have a male and female. Hope is getting thinner on top of her body and thinner in body width. Any other ideas??

Lupin

Treat her in a hospital tank with Metronidazole. She could be infested with intestinal parasites making her virtually get thinner. One tablet per 20 gallons is the recommended dosage.

Your aggressive Platy is not purely a Platy. Platies don't get too aggressive but swordtails do. It is easy to assume your Platy is a Variegated Platy or Xiphophorus variatus.

Sadie

BLue,

Is this med safe for the Otos, and frog as well? I don't have a hospital tank right now. I will get a 20 gal some time over the summer I just can't do it right now, my Moutaineer goes in for major repair tomorrow. No funds available...

musho3210

when treating for internal things, you have to medicate there food. Buy some tablets and put around 1/16th tps of powder metrodinazole per table spoon of frozen food paste. Seachem sells powdered metrodinazole with measuring spoon included, try looking for that.

Lupin

Metronidazole is a pretty mild treatment so it won't cause harm to your otos and frogs.:) It will also improve their appetite aside from removal of intestinal parasites.:)

Sadie

thanks tonight is ending on hopefule note :D

musho3210

metro is used in reef tanks so im sure scaleless fish wont be harmed provided you dont overdose

Sadie

I went to Petsmart today (best place we have here) and bought Anti-Parasite Medicated Fish Food by Jungle since it had the least amount of other ingredients. Do I need to treat externally as well? The only other product I saw was by Mardel and it had the metronidazole and another ingredient (I forget what is was and I can't find it on line).

The Jungle stuff has you feeding 3 consecutive days out of the week for 4 weeks and states that it is safe to treat with external meds as well.

BY the way becareful with this stuff I just found I have a mild allergy to it.. Dummy me crushed the pellets with the top of the lid and forgot so when I brought the bottle into the computer later to check with you guys, I rubbed my lip after handling the bottle and now have a nice dime sized welt.

musho3210

yeah it might work but the dosage is so small (1.0 metro, .5 pranq) that its more of a prevention than a cure. You can treat externally but it is not nessicary.

Sadie

Well hope is doing better. I only treated over a week's time I think it ended up being 3 days of meds because I was using 2 different meds. She is more active and is back to cleaning the place up again and displays her fins every now and then. Color is a bit better but then again her color has never been good.

Word to the wise... If you can't get the metronizazole to disolve DO NOT just put into the water if you have frogs. I killed my frog :( . The second day of meds I put one measure of the stuff straight into the tank because it would not disolve and I was feeding medicated food. When I came home he was floating across the top literally from one side to the other.. I put my hand in and that usually sends him off to hide but I was able to get pretty close before he swam to the bottom. He swam just fine though and I had seen him eat and patrol for a while so I thought he was fine. I changed the water that night. The next day I put in 2 measures but no medicated food and when I got home he was very dead floating on the top.

I thought it would be safe to do since they could ingest it, it obviously wouldn't burn their skin. I didn't realize the frogs absorb through their skin so he was crawling around for a couple days in this stuff. I od'd him But have learned from my mistake.

I found another way with the help of a local guy. I kinda did some altering. I ended up thawing the frozen worms (worked even better with brine shrimp) and added one measure to I think the meds said 1 tablespoon of food (I didn't use that much food)and added a few drops of water. I let it sit for a few minutes (marinade) I refroze it making sure that is was thin enough I could break it into chunks. Once it was refrozen I threw a couple of chunks in. It sinks to the bottom but that wasn't a problem with my guys. SInce my guys don't get this kind of stuff that often it was an extra tempting treat.