My Sick Red Turq and his slow recovery...

[strawberryblonde]

Welp, I've been treating my jumbo RT for over a year now. He first became ill when he was accidentally exposed to water from my QT tank. (You can read THAT whole ugly story in the rest of my threads).

Here's what he looked like prior to the illness that eventually wiped out nearly my entire tank:

red-turq.jpg

He recovered from the initial illness, only to cut his eye badly. It quickly infected and from there it was all downhill for him. He's been in a hospital tank of his own for nearly the entire year with only a short trip to my big tank during a time when I wasn't home to do water changes for nearly 3 months. I'm SO grateful to my husband for managing to change water during that period of time. He kept my babies alive!

So anyways, this RT has had every illness you can think of (no parasites thank goodness) and rounds of every type of med. Each round of meds would clear up the presenting issue, but none cleared up the fact that his slime coat was thick and dull and he was black in color. He had a great appetite through it all bless his little RT heart!

I was at the point of giving up on him when Pat suggested following Andrew Soh's advice. He thought it would be better to just let him rest and give him clean water daily. I did that for 2 months through May and June of this year with no improvement.

I was at the point of culling him, but, because he IS such a good eater, hadn't gotten any sicker and had survived nearly a year with this unspecified illness, I chose to give him one last round of treatments before putting him on ice.

The treatment I chose was Kanamycin and Metro along with a hearty salt dip. He lasted less than a minute in his first salt dip...not good!

Here is a pic of him taken during the last year. This is how he looked for the entire time!

RT-April-4.jpg

After the round of Kanamycin and Metro I was shocked to see him returning to nearly normal colors. All seemed to be well, and I was getting ready to introduce him to my 3" tester discus when he came down with a case of HITH. That shocked me, since he's always eaten a wide variety of foods and has a WC every day, but oh well, it was back to more meds.

I used an initial treatment of a 3% solution of Epsom Salts added to his food twice a day for 3 days. That knocked back the HITH rapidly. In the meantime I had ordered Kanamycin, Metro and Metro flake food from Kens Fish.

It arrived on the final day of Epsom Salt treatment. I chose to use a full course of the Metro and Metro Flakes just to be sure he was fully cured. Knowing how susceptible he is to secondary infections, I also chose to add the kanamycin.

Here's pics of him from last night. The lighting is VERY low (turned it on just to get the pics and used a folded garbage bag underneath the light in order to dampen the amount of light hitting the metro filled water) so he looks a bit dark, but you can still see how healthy he's looking. The hole in his head is filling in rapidly, and as usual, he's still munching food like it's going out of style. He has his metro flakes twice a day and then begs for Al's Super FDBW's twice a day too. And yep, he eats an entire cube all by himself.

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You can see his damaged eye in the second pic. He's not blind in that eye, but clearly has more difficulty seeing out of it. There's quite a bit of scar tissue built up on it.

I'd still like to see his slime coat a bit glossier, but other than that, I think he's managed to come back from whatever hell he was in for the last year!

[Second Hand Pat]

Wow Toni, what a ride and this guys saving grace is he never stopped eating. If they eat it give you something to work with. High fives to your RT and hoping for continued success. Toni, with all he has been through it may not take much to knock him down.

[Baygon]

Wow toni I know how you feel man, I have one that has been fighting for 8 months and also got one of his eyes damaged. Is it because of some sort of infection? could it be cured?

Still a gorgeous RT btw.

[strawberryblonde]

Wow Toni, what a ride and this guys saving grace is he never stopped eating. If they eat it give you something to work with. High fives to your RT and hoping for continued success. Toni, with all he has been through it may not take much to knock him down.

So true Pat, and that's why I chose to use the kanamycin during the metro, just because I know his immune system isn't up to par yet. He's going to need several months with NO illnesses at all in order to make a full recovery. I'd love to just plunk him right into the big tank, but that would risk undoing everything we've accomplished in the last 6 months! Soooo, I'm sitting on my hands and trying my best to just wait it out.

For now he's quite happy in his 55g metro tank. Metro treatment needs to go for another 7 days. He has 2 tankmates now... the GS and the little tester discus. Tester is still off his feed, but seems MUCH less stressed now that he has 2 big fish for company. He was happily zipping around the tank with them this morning and even managed to eat a couple nibbles of blackworms while the big guys were tearing up the cube. LOL

The golden sunshine is healthy as a horse...as usual...still growing and looking fabulous.

Oh and yep, the eating was the key to him surviving all of this, I'm convinced of that. He had brief periods when he didn't eat...like when the eye was so badly infected and then got a fungal infection in it. But other than those short periods (a week at most) he's always been a hearty eater. He LOVES beefheart cubes and Al's FDBW's! I give him a beefheart cube twice a week as a treat and there's never any leftovers. LOL

[strawberryblonde]

Wow toni I know how you feel man, I have one that has been fighting for 8 months and also got one of his eyes damaged. Is it because of some sort of infection? could it be cured?

Still a gorgeous RT btw.

Hi Byron,

I know this is just my own opinion, but I personally feel like damage to their eyes is one of the easiest ways for them to contract a bacterial infection. Mine started with a deep scratch on the eye, which then developed into a bacterial infection, then fungal, then he had cloudy eye for 2 months. It just refused to heal up and he kept getting darker in color and sicker and sicker as time went on.

If yours is fighting this sort of thing, try putting him into a hospital tank. At some points in time I gave mine a "friend" to hang out with because he got lonely in his hospital tank all by himself. For now, let him sit in the tank by himself. Do a 50% water change every day and feed him vitamin rich foods as well as one high protein food per day. Mine had 2 feedings per day.

If the eye doesn't clear up on its own in a week or two, you can move on to meds, but hopefully just being by himself without the constant fighting, and with plenty of water and good foods, he'll heal up.

[Disgirl]

What a story Toni! Good for you, not giving up on this fish, giving him all the best care you can. Hope he continues to do well!
Barb

[strawberryblonde]

Thank you Barb! It's been a really tough year for he and I both, but I've got my fingers crossed that he's past the worst of it.

Did you know that I have a new batch of discus and hopefully they'll need your cones before too many more months go by?!