Sick eruption, head standing, pop eye, heavy breathing

[BrendanJ23]

Just an update. I have finished the 12 day metro treatment. He has been darker in colour but also frequently passing yellow faeces. The other is still passing white stringy poo, but otherwise fine. I will continue the raised temps for another 7 days as recommended, with just clean water and big daily water changes.

If there is anything else I might be able to treat with, please advise. I can’t get and don’t have kanamycin, but have prazi and formalin on hand now, as well as a multi cure antibiotic.

[bluelagoon]

May I ask? Is the discus swollen in the belly? Or just along the swim bladder line? I know the eyes are popped. I'm thinking kidney disease of some sort. But just throughing that out there. The kidneys are atop of the swim bladder.

[Sturiosoma]

A tip I was given if you suspect bacteria is to treat the entire tank with 2 ppm of 3% Hydrogen peroxide per 10 gal of water and then do a water change, hydrogen peroxide is generally available everywhere

Jeanne

[jeep]

Brendan, I may have missed where you're located, but do you have access to penicillin or amoxicillin? EM? Quite possibly most meds that end with "mycin" could also be an alternative for internal issues. Do a search for "alternatives to kanamycin for fish" and something may pop up in your area. The pure forms are desired, but a packaged med may be your only option.

[BrendanJ23]

Thanks for your prompt replies guys.

There doesn’t appear to be swelling of or near the swim bladder, and never has been .

Jeep, I’m located in Australia. I don’t have access to these readily without being sick myself. I’ll see what I’ve got in the medicine box.

Sorry I should have uploaded a photo. I’ll do that today and see what you think. Thanks again for your help.

[BrendanJ23]

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[LouDogge]

Brenden, I recently had a fish just like this. Looked the same and did head standing at times. Nothing I did seemed to do anything. I euthanized the fish as I couldn’t see a recovery happening. Not sure what the heck happened as I have a tank of others doing quite well. Best of luck.

[bluelagoon]

That discus don't look like it will pull through. Too much damage to the tissues caused by the edema.

[Mando]

Poor guy and I'm sorry this happened to you. He looks worse than before and I agree with bluelagoon. You might have to put him down.

[BrendanJ23]

Hi Everyone, just an update again.

So yesterday I started reading into euthanasia etc. It's not something I took lightly, but I wanted to try one more thing. I had tetracycline on hand and thought it was worth a shot to dose that and see how he went ( note: the red map was removed from the tank and added to the main tank again as he was eating and pooing as normal again). Well in less than a 24 hour bath, I woke up this morning to a brightly coloured non headstanding fish. I performed a 50% water change and then watched him for 30mins or so. He actually swam around normally, but still kind of running into the glass at times. I am putting this down to the cloudy/pop eye that is still present. The swelling of the eyes even seems to be going down. While he is not out of the woods yet, I was quite surprised to see such a change in a short amount of time. I will upload some more photos when I get a chance and keep you posted. Fingers crossed

[Mando]

Wow! What a turn around?

[BrendanJ23]

So this morning the tank water was pretty gross, and had changed from yellow to red. My assumption is that this is when the medication is “done”. I’m probably wrong but if someone knows, please correct me. Aside from that, I performed 100% water change and the fish showed the same behaviours: swimming around normally, brighter and just generally looking better. The eyes seem to be going down as well. The only thing I’m not sure about is the orange looking poo that can be seen in one of the photos below. Either way I think I’ll stick on this path as it seems to be working, with maybe a small rest between treatments (6-8hours? Less) and just have clean water.

Anyway thanks for reading and look forward to your comments .



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[bluelagoon]

Did this discus recover?

[jeep]

Sorry, I missed the updates. I'm curious as well. If this was a ruptured swim bladder there would have been no improvement.

Just make sure you run the full course of tetracycline.

[BrendanJ23]

He seems to have plateau’d. I’ve done 4-5 days of tetracycline with daily WCs. He sometimes head stands for a bit then swims around normally usually just before/after a waterchange. I really don’t know. He doesn’t seem to be getting worse or better. I think I’ll do a few more days of tetracycline. I have dropped temps back to 28-29C since starting the tetracycline. Any ideas?