Mystery illness??

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Dunluce2

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Sep 12, 2005
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Wagga Wagga, Australia
I have a 6ft community tank with a range of tetras barbs danios and swordtails.

The question i have is this. I have three china barbs. 1 female and two male, I think as two colour up and get excited when i do water changes and chase the third around and "she" doesnt colour up.

anyways 1 got extremely fat. unhealthy fat. i would have said its anus was blocked and it got fatter and fatter over months. it didnt seem distressed and was a vigourous eater.

i was thinking of bumping it on the head as it was have difficulty swimming in the end. When it finally, suddenly got thinner. overnight. it looked deflated but still fatter than the other pair. I certainly didn't think it spawned.

now one of the four giant danios i have has become quite fat in a similar fashion and getting fatter. I don't think this is spawning behavior. I'm worried that maybe its a parasite cycle. Anyone have any ideas.
 

MrGoodbytes

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Nov 27, 2002
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Was the one that didn't colour up the one that got fatter? Swordtails and (most) other livebearers are easy to sex because the males have a special anal fin called a gonopodium and they are usually smaller and more colourful. It's likely your possible female gave birth and the fry were made into a light snack. Was there any kind of frequency to her size that you noticed? The gestation period of swordtails is about a month.

The fat danio could quite possibly be a gravid female. They will spawn by broadcasting their eggs, which will make a nice caviar snack if they're not separated. Someone with more experience spawning danios could probably give you better / more specific advice.
 

Dunluce2

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Sep 12, 2005
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Wagga Wagga, Australia
I have a very stable tank environment. I do a water change 30% weekly. The tank is 4years plus. I run an external canister filter that will cope with 10 times my tank size. I also run an under gravel filter with 2 power heads. the tank is moderately planted. no co2. the giant danios are the newest additions. prob 6 months. the china barbs i've had since the were tiny. the were sold as feeder fish. i got them as cycle fish. so they are 4 years plus too. never had anything like this from them in that time. only last few months. They played the lets court game early on. no signs of big bellies then. Cant be live birthing as barbs are egg layer i thought. as with danios. also barb in question is red around the anus where other were not. even though its thinner than it was it is still fatter than other pair. when it was at its fattest it looked like it had swallowed a marble.
is the condition dropsy were they get swollen and their scales stick out of their body. the barb was almost to that point when it got thinner. I had something similar in a female swordtail but she got babies stuck when trying to birth and the rest died and went bleck inside her and she died.She was old and had had many clutches of fry. i think she was just worn out. was my oldest fish. 6 years.
 

Dunluce2

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Sep 12, 2005
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Wagga Wagga, Australia
Yep. it's definitely not gravid females. I'd say it's dropsy for sure. the danio is now swollen enough for the scales to protrude from the body. Just no idea whats causing it. definitely don't think its my water quality. I think there is/was something infectious in the first barb which was transfered to the danio when it ejected whatever fluid was causing it to bloat. If there was stuff ejected from the barb the danio might have eaten it and infected itself. I'm considering humanly dispatching both fish and disecting the danio to see if i can find the cause of the dropsy. It's definitely not human to let them continue in this state.
 
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