sparkling gourami scale loss

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tidepool4

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Nov 27, 2009
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Hello-

I brought home 7 sparkling gouramis yesterday--my all-time favorite little fish--to add to an empty (freshly cycled) ten gallon. They were the only 7 in the store tank, and I looked over each pretty thoroughly before deciding to buy. While all appear to be active and eating today, one has some scale loss that concerns me. Those spots were NOT there yesterday evening.


I'm sorry I couldn't get a better picture. My immediate thought when I saw the spots was that it appears he injured himself somehow. It looks like the scales were stripped off. Next thought was possible fungus (saddleback?), though there is no "fuzz" that I can see. Honestly, I've been keeping fish for a long time and don't think I've ever had a fish with fungus, at least not that I know of, so I'm probably not good at identifying what is and what isn't a fungal infection.

What do you think it is? I wanted to add some salt but decided to hold off on doing anything until I determine exactly what's wrong.

Recently tested parameters:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 5ppm

Temp: 78
 

Aquaticfrog32

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Mar 17, 2016
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Scale loss. Could be dropsy, is he a little bloated? Could you tell me what colour the spots are? Your thought to add salt is a good one, salt won't hurt. It's not like adding medicine. Go for it.
Once you can tell me more details, I can try identify the illness.
 

tanker

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Sparkling Gouramis are meaner them you think. He could have been attacked.
I had them before and the dominate male would attack all other males.
 

tidepool4

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Nov 27, 2009
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Scale loss. Could be dropsy, is he a little bloated? Could you tell me what colour the spots are? Your thought to add salt is a good one, salt won't hurt. It's not like adding medicine. Go for it.
Once you can tell me more details, I can try identify the illness.
Salt--added! I also did a 10% water change earlier today. My plan all along has been to do very frequent, small water changes on this tank.

He's not bloated, as far as I can tell. The spots are grayish white. Other than the spots, the only abnormality I can find is that his tail is a little tattered. He's acting okay, hovering around and picking at everything like the rest of them.

Sparkling Gouramis are meaner them you think. He could have been attacked.
I had them before and the dominate male would attack all other males.
You're right. I set this tank up specifically for sparkling gouramis and made sure it was pretty heavily planted. My intention was to get 6, but I felt bad leaving just one behind in the store and ended up buying all of them. =/ 7 is probably pushing it for a 10 gallon. While I haven't noticed any real aggression, it is possible there was some fighting overnight, so I'll make sure to keep watching for that.
 

Tifftastic

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Keep in mind when adding salt that gouramis like soft water and don't handle high levels of salt too well. Less than a tablespoon per gallon is usually what I see recommended with them. This level will likely not help too much with most things. If it were me I would watch for aggression, watch for signs of worsening and if necessary treat with melafix (at half the recommended doses, labyrinth lung fish are sensitive to it) to encourage healing and help fight off any secondary bacterial infections. Melafix is more effective for this than salt is.

That being said, to me it looks like a wound. Either like the fish rubbed against something sharp enough to damage it, or it was picked on by another fish. It doesn't look fuzzy like fungus or have any pink/red like a bacterial infection.
 

FreshyFresh

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Like said above, it looks like a wound to me too. I'd keep nitrates as low as possible and monitor. I'm not a fan of adding salt or doing small water changes if I can avoid it. I go big when it comes to WCs. Especially on something as small as a 10g.
 

tidepool4

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Nov 27, 2009
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Fish looks no worse today. Again, he's active, eating and actually seems to be one of the more dominant fish in the tank.

Keep in mind when adding salt that gouramis like soft water and don't handle high levels of salt too well. Less than a tablespoon per gallon is usually what I see recommended with them. This level will likely not help too much with most things. If it were me I would watch for aggression, watch for signs of worsening and if necessary treat with melafix (at half the recommended doses, labyrinth lung fish are sensitive to it) to encourage healing and help fight off any secondary bacterial infections. Melafix is more effective for this than salt is.

That being said, to me it looks like a wound. Either like the fish rubbed against something sharp enough to damage it, or it was picked on by another fish. It doesn't look fuzzy like fungus or have any pink/red like a bacterial infection.
Yes! I added only a small amount, because of that and because I'm wary of adding too much salt to a planted aquarium, even though most of my plants are considered salt-tolerant. The gouramis from my LFS have always seemed to do okay in my hard water (though I'd never try certain species, e.g., licorice gourami), but I wouldn't want to cause any drastic changes in water chemistry.

You mentioned Melafix--have there been any actual studies on the effects of tea tree oil on the labyrinth organ? In the past, I've used Melafix with anabantoids with no problem. Part of me has always suspected that maybe a few hobbyists had bad experiences with Melafix+anabantoids, speculated as to what caused it and then passed on their conclusions as facts. It's not something I've spent a lot of time reading about though.

Good to know that you'd use Melafix over salt. I'll keep that in mind.

Like said above, it looks like a wound to me too. I'd keep nitrates as low as possible and monitor. I'm not a fan of adding salt or doing small water changes if I can avoid it. I go big when it comes to WCs. Especially on something as small as a 10g.
My plan is about 10% every other day. Bad idea? Please elaborate! :) Small, frequent changes are easier for me and seem less stressful for the fish, but I'm not opposed to doing bigger changes once a week+. For me, it's a matter of preference.

As far as the salt, I err on the side of caution when adding anything to my tanks. Curious to know why you are opposed to it...? Or is that only for soft water species? I know some people are opposed to adding ANYTHING to their tanks, and that's okay. I agree that clean water is probably the most important factor in disease/injury recovery but think other remedies are appropriate sometimes.
 

FreshyFresh

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Tidepool4, I prefer larger water changes for the reason it's easier for me to me to know where the nitrates will be at the conclusion of the water change. For instance, if nitrates are at 20ppm and you do a 50% WC, it's going to drop to 10ppm... Or atleast it should.
 

Aquaticfrog32

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Good. It all looks good. With proper medication, he should be better in no time.
 
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