Clear bulge plus bloating..pics...help!!

linuxdream

Registered Member
Aug 19, 2005
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Hi all.
I am having a problem with two of my fish, one is a black fin tetra and the other is a scissor tail. My tetra is very bloated and has a rather large clear bulge near his anal fin. It looks as if the bulge has broken through the scales and is going to pop. The scissor tail has a smaller (yet similar) bulge on his chest. They are housed in a 29gal with three mollys, another scissor tail, one red barb, two zebras, chinese algae eater, and one blue gourami.


PH - 7.8 (corrected back to 7 today)
Ammonia - 0.0
Nitrite - 0.0
Nitrate - 40

I feed twice a day alternating combinations of flakes, crisps, algae wafers, and shrimp pellets (not all every day).

I currently have the two sick fish in QT being treated with Melafix. Do any of you recognise what's going on in the pictures below? Sorry for the bad pictures, my hospital tank is small and not well lit. Thanks in advance.

fish1.png


fish2.png
 
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I would cut back on the feeding. I feed once a day and some will even say that is too often. Healthy fish can go a couple weeks without food. Less food=cleaner water=less and/or smaller water changes. I'm really not sure why they're bloated like that. Hopefully someone else will chime in who's experienced this.
 
Thanks for the reply. I think you're right, I might be feeding them too much. That bulge on the blackfin is really concerning me though.
 
as a precautionary I always add salt to my Q tanks, and feed some crushed garlic to boost their immune system and help them digest. From my experiance unexpecteed bulges usually turn out to be internal parasite that make it rather hard for the fish to poop or digest so the bulge get's bigger.

Hopefully someone else will have more insight.
Good luck!
 
I swear I read somewhere that fish can get air bubbles in them...I could be wrong and I can't remember what they said caused it. Maybe overly aerated water? I'll have to go through my books and see if I can find where I read that...
 
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