Help! Hurry! Female Bloated With Eggs?!?!

[trojannemo]

hey guys and gals. gotta make this quick.

i've got two females in my 38G community tank. both VT so i'm sure they're both females. since yesterday night I couldn't see Iris, and it worried me because she's the bully of the two and usually the one you see the most (plus she's white with irisdescent fins...you SEE her).

all night until today in the morning she was hiding behind the java moss that she's claimed as her territory. she finally moved to the front, and she is resting on the floor a little tilted forward. she looks fat. has either an egg or at least white round spot right under her body and from the side i can tell she's either got 50 eggs inside of her or a lot of worms, because she see a big fat patch of white stuff inside of her. and she's very sluggish, not really moving.


now i've never bred non-livebearing fish, but i thought she wouldn't get eggs without a guy to spawn with? what do i do? i have 3 males but none of them have been conditioned for the deed

do i leave her be? do i move her in with one of my males? i never intended to breed and not only are the males not "conditioned", but neither is their tank!

help oh betta masters, i dont want her to die

 

[newfishy]

hmm, can you qt her and get a good picture of her? it could be eggs, but it sounds more like worms/parasites or a internal bacterial infection then eggs.

 

[trojannemo]

unfortunately i dont have a way to quarantine as my QT tank was turned into a tank for the male bettas

if indeed it is parasites how would she get them so quickly and only her? all of my other fish seem fine, and this happened from one day to the next.

i tried taking pictures, but she's not being cooperative and my camera sucks as well, so her body comes out blown out. you wont be able to tell the difference between the white patch in her stomach and the white of her body

i guess she doesnt want to be bothered, now she went inside the java moss

 

[newfishy]

hmm, her attitude and symptions do not sound like just eggs, I would go post in the emergency section and ask there.

fish aliments are often quite and boom! full blown problems. just because the other fish dont seem sick does not mean that they are not infected and just dealing with it better.

 

[trojannemo]

here's a picture of her now. the red is the white patch of something in her stomach, and the little red dot which i thought was the oviposity(sp?)

i had a terrible idea, which if it's true, i think she's doomed!
could it be possible that she would have eaten a piece of rubberband that had fallen into the water? it's happened a couple of times when I bring new fish or plants, i cut the rubberband and sometimes small pieces fall into the water. no one had eaten one until now because they knew it wasnt food. and those who tried it, always spit it back out before swallowing when they realized it wasn't food. what she's got in her stomach looks the right size, shape and color to be a piece of rubberband!

if it is, how did she swallow that?! i'm positive she wont be able to poop it out

what do i do if its that?

btw, that picture is level, that's the angle she's holding her body at

 

[newfishy]

that does not look like shes super eggy, if her ovipositer is red or pink and irriatated instead of white she very well may have worms. the streak in her body that looks rubber band ish could be a bacterial infection.

its possible she could have eaten a rubber band , but I will place my bets on bacterial infection then worms. she does not look like a happy camper.

 

[trojannemo]

how would a bacterial infection manifest itself as something inside her stomach? her ovipository thing is white not red.

based on what it looks like up close and you've said, its got to be then either worms or the rubberband. but the more i look at it, the more i'm convinced it's got to be that

why would she eat that?! they get plenty of food, and there's lots of plants and some algae. and if she was still hungry, why not go after a neon tetra rather than a rubberband?!

 

[ibbledibble]

any chance of a picture of the other girl? females often hold themselves at that angle as an invitation to males. if she is eggy, then it could mean your other girl is actually a pk boy.
not sure why you say "both VT so i'm sure they're both females" how do you know for sure they are both VT? also, male pk's and female VT's tend to look fairly similar to each other.
as others have said, its probably not the case, but worth checking anyway.

maybe she thought the rubber band was a worm or something? in future, cut the rubber band off away from the tank to prevent mishaps.

 

[trojannemo]

any chance of a picture of the other girl? females often hold themselves at that angle as an invitation to males. if she is eggy, then it could mean your other girl is actually a pk boy.
not sure why you say "both VT so i'm sure they're both females" how do you know for sure they are both VT? also, male pk's and female VT's tend to look fairly similar to each other.
i'm sure 'cause i've had the plakat-boy-for-a-female happen before.
she doesn't flare, gets stress lines around this girl, and has the same round fins that the other one ones.
they're both exactly the same physically except for the color

maybe she thought the rubber band was a worm or something? in future, cut the rubber band off away from the tank to prevent mishaps.
this certainly has taught me that!
if she indeed ate it, what chances does she have?

 

[newfishy]

you know, if the rubber band is red it might look a lot like a bloodworm. if it realy is that I have no clue what you might do.

 

[trojannemo]

ok update...she's dead at around 7:30pm EST

my sister dissected her for me, and it wasn't a rubber band....it was an egg sac a really really big, as in, taking the entirety of her insides big

anyways, i've never opened a decorative fish, but it looked just like the egg sac of the fish you buy from the fisheries and stuff.

so, could it be then i was right and it was eggs? if so, how the heck did she get so many as to kill herself?! don't they need a guy to put out eggs? what about conditioning?

if it's not eggs, then what the heck was it an why did it look like an egg sac?


RIP Iris

 

[newfishy]

it could have been cysts, it could have been very small worms that looked like eggs. the other female could be a juvinale male pk in disguise, or you could have been feeding her too rich of a diet too often, thus she got very eggy. or she had a deformity or other genitic condition that caused her to have a huge egg area and she couldnt over come it.

Im sorry you lost her.