sick fish

R

rushikova

AC Members
Jul 24, 2006
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This is about a catfish, but because my LFS guy said he'd seen the problem in tiger barbs and other fish, I'm posting it here.

I've got an adult female albino peppered cory who seems to be having a problem - twice now she's had what the guy called "fits", where she's ended up at the surface, spinning rapidly on her side. He said I should despatch her as there was no hope, but I'm not willing to.

Does anyone know what might be causing this and what I could do to help her? I've put her and her 5 pals in a 20g tank by themselves, running on an internal fluval 4 with filter media from the original tank. The other cories are absolutely fine - I moved them to keep her company, and her because her tail was being munched by my other fish. She's very thin but is eating (feeding JMC pelelts and JMC high protein food, also frozen bloodworm), but she seems to sometimes have trouble staying upright and sometimes staying on the bottom.

Water parameters for the main tank (60g tropical) are ammo 0, nit 0, nat ~5. 25% water change every week with trace minerals added, the water in the 20g tank came from this tank to ease the move.
 
Sorry, not much you can do, I don't know what that could be but you could add some stress coat to calm the fish. Other than that hopefully it will pull through, some times we get fish that were mishandled or caught in a unsafe manor, the only thing you can do to unavoid this again is to closely watch the fish you want to buy for a good while, make sure he is acting natural, nice looking fins, good color, etc. and don't settle for "You can't pick which one you want we just catch one" You should get the fish you had your eye on, so watch them catch the fish.
Good luck
 
That's the odd thing - I've had this fish for 5 years now, I spotted her in a tankful of 1" albino bronze cories. She's been fine all that time, she's just suddenly gone iffy. The other cories are the same age (unrelated as far as I now tho), and no problems with them.

She is eating well now though - less competition from my larger greedy cats has helped I think.
 
forget the stress coat. it will do nothing to help the fish. It is a water conditioner intended, primarily, to eliminate chlorine, chloramine, and heavy metal issues at water change time. marketing, advertising, and label copy have created a myth that it is good for other fish issues. Gotta love a good ad agency. they create myths to debunk without a qualm in order to sell product.

Mojo, there are times i consider pitching a few of the accounts that sell to the hobbyists--want to tag team them--lol. But, then i realize i would be the worst kind of guy for many of them. I would want to sell products by telling the truth and not create false hype of intentional misunderstandings. Probably would not help product sales one bit.

The word "Whirling" came to mind. Probably should not. But, given the description the lfs guy with the "dispatch" idea may not be far off the mark.

have you added any "new fish" to any tank that the cory has been in--or any of the fish the cory was sharing a tank with at the time of symptom onset?
 
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