Cataracts?

[Cooky_luvs]

Today at my LFS they has thick lipped gouramis on sale for 49 cents each. The reason being that they were a new shipment of them had a "birth defect" that looks similar to cataracts. I brought some home since they looked so sad and scared. They aren't blind but close to it. Can fish even get cataracts? The pic below is of very bad quality (since my camera is acting up) but that's what they look like. It's not cloudy eye as it looks in the pic (i'll try to get a better one).

 

[The-Wolf]

yes, fish can get cataracts.
this is often caused by a poor diet or inbreeding

 

[Cooky_luvs]

yes, fish can get cataracts.
this is often caused by a poor diet or inbreeding

It's probably from inbreeding then, they said it was a birth defect. Poor fishes.

P.S. Correction they are banded gouramis, was tired when I wrote that.

 

[sylvia]

Inbreeding's not normaly an issue with banded's. Looking at the pic, it does look awfully like cloudy eye. If not and it's just the pic, malnutrition could be the issue though it seems unlikely as these gouramies aren't particularly picky and standard flake foods should pretty much cover their nutritional needs. Plus I'd never trust an LFS that claims to know they were born with that defect - how the hell do they know that? It sounds like their making things up to me... LFSs usualy have regular shipments they take for granted, generaly don't take any interest in where their fish came from, and certainly don't ask about their life history or anscestry Regardless of exactly what the problem is, unless you are definite this isn't a bacterial infection (such as cloudy eye), avoid them like the plague. Your ealy don't want to itnroduce something like that to your tank - nor do you want to pay the LFS for lying (if that's what they are doing).

 

[Cooky_luvs]

Inbreeding's not normaly an issue with banded's. Looking at the pic, it does look awfully like cloudy eye. If not and it's just the pic, malnutrition could be the issue though it seems unlikely as these gouramies aren't particularly picky and standard flake foods should pretty much cover their nutritional needs. Plus I'd never trust an LFS that claims to know they were born with that defect - how the hell do they know that? It sounds like their making things up to me... LFSs usualy have regular shipments they take for granted, generaly don't take any interest in where their fish came from, and certainly don't ask about their life history or anscestry Regardless of exactly what the problem is, unless you are definite this isn't a bacterial infection (such as cloudy eye), avoid them like the plague. Your ealy don't want to itnroduce something like that to your tank - nor do you want to pay the LFS for lying (if that's what they are doing).

After this post I had isolated the banded's in a 5 gallon to see how they did. Well the lived about 6 days. Then after talkin to an employee there he told me they didn't come in like that. So yeah the LFS lied. The cloudy eye was "very" advanced, for now on i'll be careful what I buy there.