Redness on Goldfish belly?

[dmk]

About a week ago, I discovered what I think was an oodinium(Velvet )parasite problem on my goldfish (previous thread here ). I treated that with Copper Sulfate and by shading the tank with a dark sheet. Now one of the fancies has some redness on his belly. He's fairly active, but his fins are clamped down a little.

Could this be a secondary bacterial infection due to the parasites? If so, how should I best treat it? I plan to continue the CopperSafe treatment for another weak or so since he still has a faint dusting of oodinium on him in spots.

 

[dmk]

OK, I'm still not sure what to do. I went to the big chain pet store where I bought the fish and asked if they had any problems. The kid I talked with said they had Ick, and pop-eye in the tanks recently, but seemed to act like this was just had the normal stuff. He didn't think they had Velvet in any of the tanks. He wasn't much help with a recommendation for treatment. When I walked over to the tanks, I noticed they had three dead Goldfish floating at the top.

So, I decided to continue the Coppersafe and darken the tank for another week or so to continue the attack on Velvet. For the redness on the fancy, I looked at the Mardel diagnosis pamphlet and it recommended Maracyn-Two as a treatment for Dropsy, an internal infection. I remember reading on here somewhere that it might be best to treat gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria at the same time so I also bought Maracyn to use concurrently. The directions with the medications indicated that it's safe to use these three together.

Am I doing the right thing?

 

[didy]

Parasites do make opportunity for bacterial infections to set in. Do you have a picture? Why do you think it's dropsy? Does it have the apperance of that?


The Maracyn and Maracyn 2 should be fine with the Mardel brand Copper med. Keep checking water parameters and do water changes when needed. The meds will not be too kind to your bio filter.

 

[dmk]

Hello Didy, thanks for the reply.

I tried to take a picture, but the Goldies move around too much and all I get is a blur. It looks just like a bruise across his whole belly, but it's red instead of that purplish color of a human bruise.

The Mardel diagnostics chart indicated that it was Dropsy or an internal infection. Following their flow chart, that was the only result of answering yes to any 'redness' on the fish.

Yes, I was concerned about the Bio filters. I'm doing daily 20% water changes and quality tests. (replacing the lost copper sulfate and treating with antibiotics after the water change)

 

[dmk]

Well, it seems that the antibiotics did the trick!

24 hours after the first treatment 90% of the redness was gone, whatever it was. Now, three daily treatments later, it's all gone and he generally looks better. He still looks a little weak and seems to get a bit winded after swimming a while, but his fins are out and he does get up and swim around pretty often. It certainly hasn't hurt his appetite at all!

The continued treatment of Coppersafe, darkening the tank and daily vacuuming the gravel also seems to have taken it's toll on the Oodinium. I can't see any more white dust on them and the flashing seems to have mostly stopped.
Boy, I hope I've licked this. Sick fish are so pitiful.

I'll continue the remainder of the medication, then water change it out. Then I'll have to concentrate on getting all the good bacteria healthy again. And this was supposed to be a relaxing hobby...

 

[didy]

Great news that the fish are getting better.

Keep up with the antibiotic for at least the minimum amount of treatment time listed on the meds. Otherwise, you could create resistant strains.