Crooked Neon?

F.sparverius

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Oct 3, 2003
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I bought 3 neon tetras today and one of them looks as though it's dorsal fin is offset from it's stomach a good bit. It looks like soneone folded the fish. It seems to be eating well, and swimming fairly vell considering it's lopsidedness. Have any of you seen something like this? Will it go away?
 
This is almost always a sign of a very ill fish, IME. I would separate it from the others, even if it means keeping it in a bucket as a q-tank. Not a good sign...

Jim
 
Originally posted by Aquarius0015
I understood that neons are highly inbred. Could the crookedness be a genetic problem indicative of inbreeding?
That's what I am guessing too....
 
It's back was probably broken in the capture and transport process. Had that happen to one of the Neons I bought recently and it died not long after.
 
Another one of them died. Now the last one is swimming around the tank and the corys keep running into to poor stupid thing. I guess I'll get more if this one manages to live a few more days.
As they are schooling fish I would think they would not like to be alone?.

Apparently neons are not particularly hardy fish. One of my male rosey barbs has jumped clean out of the tank and flopped on the floor for 3-5 minutes, got stuck in the fish castle and ripped the better part of his tail off and quite a few scales and 2 months later he's in perfect conditon and just as active as before. Carp are cool.


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the fish castle is gone and the hood is ALWAYS closed now
 
sounds like to me that your neons have/had a bacterial or protozoan infection. You typically see them waste away - and one of the signs is a crescent shape to the fish, kind of like they have been folded, as you describe. When you look at the fish from the front, does it look like it is emaciated? (no muscle tissue) Especially behind the head/gill area.
If you suspect bacterial infection, then you can dose Metronidazole, an anti-biotic. You can buy flake food that has this med in it. SeaChem also makes a topical formula. Do a course of treatment for 10 days and that should kill the internal bacterial infection off. Do not treat less than these 10 days or you won't kill off all the bacteria and the bacteria will become resistant to anti-biotics. Then you can buy more fish.
Also, there is a slight possibility that your fish might have worms, and you can treat it with Fluke-Tabs. Go the Metronidazole way first though.
Others might chime in who know more about it than I do, but it could be that you had an infection of Neon Tetra Disease - it will spread to your other Tetras as well if you don't treat.
 
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