Help something's wrong with my fish?

Question

My baby bala shark (1 1/2-2 in.) is sick. It's fins are red and slightly tattered. It has been acting lathargic and swims slightly downward. It was only noticed two days ago. It has no white spots and had been quite healthy before.

The bala shark lives in a 30 gallon aquarium with three other slightly larger bala sharks, 5 small tiger barbs, 2 dojo loaches, 2 plecostamus, 1 albino barb, 2 large snails, and a docile siamese fighting fish. All the other fish seem fine and are showing no symptoms. I have already done two water changes and added some stress relief medication.

I am wondering if my bala shark is just suffering from battle wounds, an ammonia spike, or if its something else and if I need to quarantine the fish right away.

Answer 1

The slightly tattered fins do some like damage from nipping and I would blame the tiger barbs personally. They are at least the most likely nippers in your tank.

Nipping should not cause swimming problems, lethargic behavior or excessive redness in the fins though. An ammonia spike bad enough to cause these symptoms would cause at least some symptoms in the other fish as well, so I would rules that out as the cause.

To me what you describes sounds all too much like a bacterial blood infection. There are numerous bacteria that can cause this but the problem is usually all lumped together under the broad term septicemia, which just means blood infection basically.

This is not a condition that will simply go away or improve without treatment. I would suggest you isolate the fish to a hospital tank and treat him there as this is rarely contagious and with the other fish appearing normal there is no readily observable reason to treat them or kill your bacterial cycle treating your 30 gallon tank. As the infection is internal you have somewhat limited treatment options. In my opinion the best option Furanace. It is well absorbed by the fish and can actually treat internally where as many other common antibiotics available at the pet shop cannot. I would also suggest you feed the fish medicated food for bacterial infections. No harm would be caused by feeding it to your other fish for 5-7 days as well. I would plan a treatment of 10-14 days, even if the fish seems well after only 7, these problems can rebound easily and if it does it will be even more difficult to treat.

MM

Answer 2

I believe you've already done a good job of diagnosing this yourself. See the link below for the information on ammonia poisoning.

While your tank may seem okay now, you'll need something much larger (and in the near future) considering the probable adult sizes of the fish you have. If this tank is a new set-up, you'll continue to see ammonia and nitrite building up just for the number of fish. It takes two weeks to two months to get a population of beneficial bacteria that is capable of converting the ammonia and nitrite to nitrate. If you don't have a water testing kit, I'd suggest purchasing one. You'll need to track these three compounds until only the nitrates register. See the link for cycling a tank at the end.

To reduce ammonia, the best method is a water change - only 25% or so of the tank volume at a time. If this is a new tank, you'll be experiencing cloudy water soon - you'll want to take out more water and give everthing a good cleaning, but this is exactly what you shouldn't do. The "cloud" is the beginnings of your bacterial bloom. Just do changes as recommended and the cloudiness will resolve on its own with time. Take too much water (and bacteria) out and you'll only be prolonging the process.

This could also be septicemia (as MM mentions) or a pH problem.

Answer 3

If it has slightly tattered fins i would think it would because of another fish attacking it. Best thing is to remove the injured fish and keep an eye out for any aggresive fish in your tank. I had a fish that only attacked at night so i had no idea how my fish started to have torn fins

Answer 4

I just answered a question just like this! In a few days, your fish will start to float, but still breathe. Try to save it before it comes to that, because then it will die from too much air from the surface of the water.

Answer 5

if I were you, I would put the fish in a seprate tank imediatly, just in case. then when you have the chance, take it to the vet to have it checked out.

Answer 6

Sounds like ammonia as that tank is EXTREMELY overcrowded.