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Violet12345

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Hello all.. I have a bit of a crisis. My gold gourami is very bloated.. I'm not sure why. I'm new to the hobby but I know this doesn't look good. The gourami is also passing white poo with some red looking strings hanging down? The scales don't look like they are pineconing. It's swimming fine but wanting to stay at the top of the tank. My parameters are good. Ammonia is 0, nitrites are 0, and nitrates are like .5. I would hate to loose this gourami.. it's one of my favorites!
 
Hi and welcome to the forum :)

How long has the tank been set up for?
Has the filter cycled?
How often do you do water changes and how much water do you change?
Do you gravel clean the substrate when you do the water change?

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Fish do a stringy white poop for several reasons.
1) internal bacterial infection causes the fish to stop eating, swell up like a balloon, breath heavily at surface or near a filter outlet, do stringy white poop, and die within 24-48 hours of showing these symptoms. This cannot normally be cured because massive internal organ failure has already occurred.

2) internal protozoan infection cause the fish to lose weight rapidly (over a week or two), fish continues to eat and swim around but not as much as normal, does stringy white poop. If not treated the fish dies a week or so after these symptoms appear. Metronidazole normally works well for this.
There is a medication (API General Cure) that contains Praziquantel and Metronidazole and sometimes help with this.

3) intestinal worms like tapeworm and threadworms cause the fish to lose weight, continue eating and swimming normally, do a stringy white poop. Fish can do this for months and not be too badly affected. In some cases, fish with bad worm infestation will actually gain weight and get fat and look like a pregnant guppy. This is due to the huge number of worms inside the fish.

If the fish are still eating well, then worms is the most likely cause. If the fish has thin red hair like things sticking a couple of mm out the fish's butt, then it has thread/ round worms like Camallanus or Capillaria.

You can use Praziquantel to treat tapeworm and gill flukes. And Levamisole to treat thread/ round worms.

You treat the fish once a week for 3-4 weeks. The first treatment will kill any worms in the fish. The second and third treatments kill any baby worms that hatch from eggs inside the fish's digestive tract.

You do a 75% water change and complete gravel clean 24-48 hours after treatment. Do at least 2 big water changes between treatments to remove any medication.

Treat every fish tank in the house at the same time.

Do not use the 2 medications together. If you want to treat both medications in a short space of time, treat them with Praziquantel one day. Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the next 2 days. Treat with Levamisole after the second water change. Then do water changes for the next couple of days before doing the second round of treatments with the Praziquantel.

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To work out the volume of water in the tank:
measure length x width x height in cm.
divide by 1000.
= volume in litres.

When you measure the height, measure from the top of the substrate to the top of the water level.

There is a calculator/ converter in the "How To Tips" at the top of this page that will let you convert litres to gallons if you need it.

Remove carbon from the filter before treating or it will absorb the medication and stop it working.

Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge. Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate. Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration when using medications because they reduce the dissolved oxygen in the water.
 

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