GBR possible disease??

T

tjvollmer

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Jan 14, 2010
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Not sure if this is an issue, but I did not notice this before, just this morning. One of my new Rams looks like he has a lump on his head..any ideas what this could be? The skin is not broken but it does look sort of pink and swollen. also I see a few tiny white dots on all of them, could this be the beginning of Ick? What is the proper treatment if so?

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Strange, being that it's a male I would amost say that's a nuchal hump (which is a common occurrence on males of certain cichlid species) but I've never heard of, or seen rams with them.

As for the white dots, I can almost see them on his tail. If they look like grains of salt, it's probably ich, unfortunately it's pretty common on rams.

The best (and safest) way to cure ich is to raise the temp to the mid-high 80's and add 2 teaspoons of salt per gallon, maintain this temp and salinity for at least a week, even if the spots have disappeared before that. Regular old table salt is fine, though I find that kosher salt doesn't cloud up the water as badly.
 
Ram bump on the head

Thanks for the input. I was really upset yesterday when I saw that. Actually I believe that one is a female. She has punctuated blue scales inside her black spot which we were told is a female trait although for a newbie it's pretty difficult to be sure.

I don't think the bump is normal. At first I thought maybe Hole in the head but there are no lateral wounds on the bump although there are a few raised scales. Eyes are not popping..yet, but who knows, with all that pressure it could come to that. After doing some research it seems the most logical answer is some kind of secondary bacteria infection. Maybe she had some kind of tiny wound there and it has become infected under the skin and formed a cyst. We treated the water with Melafix, although I have no idea how effective that would be on such a thing, it won't hurt the biological filter or the plants and fish, or so it says. So I guess we will just have to wait and see.. This morning she was still acting normal but I have noticed the male who seemed interested in her before no longer seems to be.

Already turned up the temp last night to 86 degrees.

Have not added salt yet as I have a golden nugget pleco in there and heard he would not do well with the salt, but would tolerate the higher temp for two weeks. Same for the Julii Corys.

I did read that unless this is a more heat resistant strain of Ich, the higher temp for this time length should speed up the life cycle of the bug, make the cysts burst faster, cease reproduction of the baby ich and make them die out completely. We had planned on using only this method unless we didn't see cysts falling off in about 3-4 days. Then we thought we would chance the salt.

I have seen so much variance in how much salt and what kind of salt to put in though. I have seen anything from 1 TBP per 5 Gal, 1 tsp per gallon to 3 tsp per gallon. Perhaps some of the senior members could chime in about this and come up with a consensus on a recommended amount. Perhaps there already is one and I just haven't seen it.

Anyway thanks for the response, hope I can post later with good news.:huh:
 
I had thought of the parasite thing, but it seems most of them attack either the gills or the digestive system. I couldn't find one instance where it had effected this area, although I did find one story of a Ram who died of some kind of lump on the head that eventually erupted and became an open wound..Uhgg! Consensus was secondary bacteria infection..no one had any conclusive advice or answers. Hope it doesn't go that far. Anyone with any experience like this or any advice on how to treat would be welcomed!!
 
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Treatment: Melafix nightly to maintain skin health of cats during treatment / Temp increase to 86.5 degrees/Adding 3/4 cup Aquarium Salt 4 times over next 48 hours. Adding 1 tsp salt for each gallon changed over in water change system daily. Also, added a small pump filter to increase oxygen. Removed all carbon from filters. Will do another vac this weekend.

This procedure seems to be working. I am not seeing any Ich spots at all and my GBR female's lump seems to be subsiding??

Watching the Corys and Pleco closely for signs of stress. All seems well..fingers crossed, we may be out of the woods.

My mistake...no quarantine, I was just too darn impatient to get those fish in there. A good example of why you should listen to the veterens of this hobby!!
 
Update..Lumpy GBR

Since no one seemed to have any ideas on what was going on here I thought I would update in case anyone else ended up having this problem.

We are progressing with the above treatment method and the bump on our BGR's head is definately shrinking. There is still a bit of swelling as well as a few raised scales on one side, but it is definately looking a lot better. She is behaving normally, and eating.

I thought a couple days ago I noticed a small red dot on the head of a second Ram under the skin. It was so small I couldn't say for sure, but I did notice this morning it was even smaller than before. If that's true, I think it is possible it is HIH or some kind of parasite, although we are not treating specifially for either of those things, so I'm not sure why it would be getting better except maybe those bacteria are also sensetive to heat and salt.

As long as this trend of healing continues we will not add any further medecine.

If anyone else has experienced these symptoms in GBR's I would love to know about it.
 
i have had multiple gbr that developed a bump on their head and pimple like sores. i tried raising temp, Melafix and primafix. i was never able to cure it and they eventually died. i never tried salt.

i have a feeling that they might be sensitive to carbon. anyone keep gbr in a non planted tank with active carbon?
 
Do a search for german blue rams pimple or bump in the illness disease section. You will find at least 2 threads detailing it totally. Mine was one of them. He never acted sick but it never cleared up until he died. Another guy had the same thing happen recently and he lost his. It appears to be common to German Blue Rams. No idea what causes it or how to cure it. I threw everything at it, from medicated water treatments, to salt, to medicated food. Everything from bacterial, to parasite, nothing cured it.
 
I see it with Ramirezi

seems they are prone to HITH.
in case you wonder.. pustules will form on pimple like protrusions aka swelling.
a group may form causing larger swelling..
I had a male with the same..eventually the pustule erupted and a cavity was left..eventually becoming fatal.
this may or may not be the case but if the swelling has 1 or more white pimple like pustules you may be seeing the same thing.

they can recover but it depends on the severity and locale of the pustules and swelling.

btw, I see it more common in domestically raised livestock so suspect it may actually be a problem in genetics and the inability to fight off HITh(often attributed to parasitic protozoa)

BTW the protozoa are affected by metronidazole so it is the usual course of action along with clean water.
 
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