please help me find out whats causing the DROPSY!?

Question

over the past week and a half,, maybe 2 weeks, i have had 3 fish die of dropsy, and it looks as though i have one more with dropsy! my water is FINE! ammonia, nitrite, :ZERO. my nitrate is at around 40. ... i REALLY need to find out whats going on, or ALL of my fish will (as it seems) eventually get dropsy!
... i froze the first two fish that died.. they have now thawed, im going to cut them open and see whats going on. BUT i dont know what to look for! im an extremely novice fish keeper--- sooo i have no idea what im doing. i have a microscope. please, tell me what to look for?

Answer 1

I'm afraid that won't help at this stage. Once frozen and thawed the fishes insides are far too damaged to help with a diagnosis. Futher, you would need far more material than just a microscope to culture then examine the thousands of bacteria you would collect looking for the one that caused this. But, that's not to say all is lost, an exact identification of the bacteria involved is not required for a treatment. Dropsy is a broad term applied to any internal infection that causes organ damage and fluid collection in the fishes abdomen. In almost all cases it is a bacterial infection and the majority of those start in the liver. There are other causes, but those are a very small minority of cases. Odds are good that one of the fish died in the tank and this would be the source of the continued contamination. Even if the dead fish was removed in minutes it will have contaminated the tank. As this has jumped from fish to fish in your tank, I would suggest you treat the entire tank. The treatment of choice for me is Furanace. It's an excellent antibiotic for internal infections because it's easily absorbed into the fishes systems. I would suggest you treat with this as soon as possible and continue treatment for at least 2 weeks. I would also include in the treatment some antibacterial fish food. It's available at most better pet shops and can, like the Furnance, be ordered online. Remember to remove the carbon fom your filter as you treat because it will remove the medication from the water other wise.

This treatment will destroy your cycle. As it kills the harmful bacteria in the tank it will also kill the beneficial bacteria. You will need to watch for ammonia spikes during and after the treatment.

Hope that helps, feel free to write if I can help further.

MM

Answer 2

This may be a hard disease to diagnose even for an expert. The reason I say that is that there are several conditions that cause dropsy, and not all of them are something that you could identify with a microscope.

The main symptom of dropsy is that the fish isn't able to get rid of excess water - caused by a failure of the kidneys to function properly. As the fluids build up, the fish bloats, so the scales stick out. What you need to do is to identify what's been happening near or in your tank to cause the kidney failure. Sometimes it's something that is easily fixed, other times not.

One cause is a disease causing organism - bacterial infection, spore producing one-celled animals, and trypanosomes have been linked to dropsy. This can be treated with a broad-spectrum antibiotic if it's caught early.

Another cause is the presence of a toxin (poison) that shuts the kidneys down. The toxin can from someone spraying a chemical (air freshener, perfume, bug spray) in the room near the tank. Also, putting too much (or mixing different kinds) of some medications in the tank, or overdosing algae killing chemicals can have this effect.

Sometimes the cause is a poor diet. Do you vary what you feed to your fish? Is the fish food old (even fish food can go bad after a few months - refrigerate it and it will last longer) or have a musty/moldy smell?

Poor water quality can also be related. Your ammonia and nitrites are good, but you should try to keep the nitrates below 30ppm (and below 20 ppm would be even better!).

Sometimes, there's just no way to identify the cause.

I'll pass along some links to articles that relate to dropsy and some of its causes - maybe you'll be able to find something that will sound like what may be causing it for you. In the meantime, I'd try a few partial water changes (around 25%) over the next few days to lower the nitrates (and remove any chemicals you may have added to treat your previous fish)and see if this helps your fish. If not, you might want to try an antibiotic that is specific for dropsy (it will say on the label if it treats this) and be careful to use the correct dose. I hope all goes well for your surviving fish.

http://www.fishdeals.com/fish_diseases/dropsy/
http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/health/toxic.shtml
http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/health/bactin.shtml
http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/feeding/nutrition.shtml
http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/algae/cyano.shtml
http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/health/othprotist.shtml
http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/docs/feeding/blackworms.shtml

Answer 3

Dropsy is caused by poor water conditions. Try changing the water once a week.

Are you sure it was Dropsy they died of? How did you know? Did you treat your tank?

Why on God's green earth are you going to cut open your fish? Do you have any idea what you are looking for? Also, frozen organs won't be the same color as fresh ones.

Answer 4

Dropsy is more a symptom than a disease. Generally the kidneys are affected and there is a lot of fluid retention casing the classic "pinecone" swelling.
Poor water conditions are a major contributor and the most common bacterial pathogen is aeromonas.
Eustrongylid nematodes can also cause dropsy symptoms and are unfortunately no treatable.

Other factors can contribute to susceptibility of aeromonas infections that case dropsy other than just ammonia, ECT. Poor quality food that ferments in the gut, to much air retained by the food (soaking dry food for 5 minutes prior to feeding helps with this), poor electrolyte levels that to not allow proper osmotic function often brought on by ill advised use of Bottle water or RO water without the addition of proper minerals.

Here are a few articles worth reading that explain this better:
http://aquarium-answers.blogspot.com/2006/11/betta-with-dropsy.html

http://aquarium-answers.blogspot.com/2006/12/how-do-fish-drink.html

http://aquarium-answers.blogspot.com/2007/03/trematodes-and-nematodes-in-fish.html

Some more information;
Be careful about sites that recommend Penicillin (this shows old data) as this antibiotic has been shown in research to useless in the vast majority of aquatic diseases (penicillin is gram positive, while most aquatic diseases are gram negative). The bacteria that can cause Dropsy symtoms will not respond to this antibiotic. Generally the only antibiotics with any possibilty of beating these internal infections are Kanamycin, Chloramphenicol, and a to a much lesser extent, Nitrofuarazone. Along with medicated baths that employ methylene blue and epsom salts.