My Graumies :(

[miss_machine]

so i went out and got four graumies a week and a day ago.
two dwarf male/female
two sunset dwarf graumies male/female
they were all very shy and the two females and dwarf started coming out and having fun. i noticed the female had a bubble by her eye, which today i had noticed popped and the other two fish were picking at it, so i moved her into a container and placed it at the top of the tank floating (woth no lid for some oxygen). i do not want her to die i dont know when i will be able to return back to the store. i also noticed my sunset graumie (male) has never once came out at feeding time, and hides behind his rock. he does come out but for seconds, i notcied today he is getting bloated. reading all these are making me quite sad and nervous. i havnt gotten a chance to see his string of poo because hes constantly hiding behind his rock. (i thought it might be a territorial thing) but not to eat... i just want to know if my other fish will be okay, if they do have anything is it contagious? i'm so sad please help.

thanks
kelleeee

 

[WILDER]

Can you post water stats in ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and ph.
One fish is bloated and one has bubble on her eye.

Any signs of flicking and rubbing.

I think I would add a bacterial med as gouramis are prone to bacterial infections.

Signs of bacterial infections with no syntoms are being pale or darker in colour, listless and lethagic, and not eating somtimes.

 

[LauraFrog]

You say your male is bloated? This sounds like constipation or dropsy. Get some frozen peas and soak them in boiling water for a few minutes. Then take them out, run water over them to cool them and take off the shells. Crush up some garlic, roll the peas in the juice and chuck them in. Peas sometimes fix constipation and if your fish won't eat something laced with fresh garlic juice it has problems.

If it's dropsy, there's very little you can do. Are his scales sticking out? It makes him look like a pineapple or a pinecone. That's dropsy. It's incurable and usually a result of poor water quality, overcrowding or stress. Sometimes if you take away the cause in the early stages dropsy goes away but usually the fish dies. If it gets worse and it's obviously incurable my personal advice would be to put the fish down. It looks like a painful condition and it doesn't go away.

There's a disease called popeye which I know nothing about but other people can probably help.

We really need a bit more information. How big is the tank? Were there any fish in it before you put the gouramis in? Is it cycled? What are the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate readings? Are the gouramis the only fish in there?

 

[miss_machine]

You say your male is bloated? This sounds like constipation or dropsy. Get some frozen peas and soak them in boiling water for a few minutes. Then take them out, run water over them to cool them and take off the shells. Crush up some garlic, roll the peas in the juice and chuck them in. Peas sometimes fix constipation and if your fish won't eat something laced with fresh garlic juice it has problems.

If it's dropsy, there's very little you can do. Are his scales sticking out? It makes him look like a pineapple or a pinecone. That's dropsy. It's incurable and usually a result of poor water quality, overcrowding or stress. Sometimes if you take away the cause in the early stages dropsy goes away but usually the fish dies. If it gets worse and it's obviously incurable my personal advice would be to put the fish down. It looks like a painful condition and it doesn't go away.

There's a disease called popeye which I know nothing about but other people can probably help.

We really need a bit more information. How big is the tank? Were there any fish in it before you put the gouramis in? Is it cycled? What are the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate readings? Are the gouramis the only fish in there?

i have 10 gallon tank, there were no fish in it before hand. there are only the four graumies in the tank. this my first fish experience, so i do not know any of the ph, nitrate, or ammonia readings. i had the tank up and running about 5 days before i put any fish in. i will try the pea's and garlic juice tomorrow (hoping we have some peas) his scares are not poking out or anything. so im hoping it is just constipation. as for the female, he eye isnt really bulging, i have some pictures of it. i will try to post.

 

[miss_machine]

Can you post water stats in ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and ph.
One fish is bloated and one has bubble on her eye.

Any signs of flicking and rubbing.

I think I would add a bacterial med as gouramis are prone to bacterial infections.

Signs of bacterial infections with no syntoms are being pale or darker in colour, listless and lethagic, and not eating somtimes.

it was kinda skiddish but then again i noticed the other fish doing the same just darting at one another. its a female so shes just silver in colour and cant really tell any colour variation, i posted a picture of it if it might help a bit. she was eating fine up until today and shes had the mark since the day i got her home, it was very small and not noticable at first, i thought it might be just a marking, but it grew.

 

[LauraFrog]

What's the lump behind her eye? Was that there when you bought her?

Did you cycle the tank before you put fish in it? Fish waste, uneaten food and decaying plants all break down into ammonia which is very poisonous. In a cycled tank, bacteria turn ammonia into slightly less toxic nitrite, and then other bacteria turn nitrite into nitrate which is not as dangerous. Live plants use nitrate as fertiliser and weekly water changes dilute it enough to keep it at safe levels.

If you put all four gouramis in an uncycled tank all at once you've probably got a lot of ammonia and nitrite in the tank. This is almost certainly why your fish are sick. Do water changes, probably 20/30% every day. As soon as you get back to the LFS, buy some ammonia/nitrite/nitrate test kits. Also if you can get some gravel or filter media from a cycled tank and put it in yours - the bacteria will colonise your tank faster. In a fully cycled tank, ammonia and nitrate should be at 0.

 

[miss_machine]

What's the lump behind her eye? Was that there when you bought her?

Did you cycle the tank before you put fish in it? Fish waste, uneaten food and decaying plants all break down into ammonia which is very poisonous. In a cycled tank, bacteria turn ammonia into slightly less toxic nitrite, and then other bacteria turn nitrite into nitrate which is not as dangerous. Live plants use nitrate as fertiliser and weekly water changes dilute it enough to keep it at safe levels.

If you put all four gouramis in an uncycled tank all at once you've probably got a lot of ammonia and nitrite in the tank. This is almost certainly why your fish are sick. Do water changes, probably 20/30% every day. As soon as you get back to the LFS, buy some ammonia/nitrite/nitrate test kits. Also if you can get some gravel or filter media from a cycled tank and put it in yours - the bacteria will colonise your tank faster. In a fully cycled tank, ammonia and nitrate should be at 0.

i didnt overly notice it when i got her, but i saw a little something and didnt think much but the next day or two it had grown into like a bubble, and i guess the other fish had been picking at it, and it opened (i saw them nipping it a few times earlier)

if you were to begin a tank, how would you cycle it? all i did was set it up, rinse stuff off that i put in the tank, used a water conditioner, and also stuff to keep the algy away for freshwater fish (i didnt use as much as they told me to put in it) and let it sit for a few days.

 

[WILDER]

Read up on cycling a tank.

 

[LauraFrog]

There are threads somewhere in this forum. Basically what you do is chuck in gravel or filter media from a mature tank, chuck in cloudy ammonia at a rate of 1mL/5gals daily, and test the water. When ammonia and nitrite are consistently coming up as 0, you can start adding fish.

If you haven't done it before you put fish in the tank it's too late to do a fishless cycle (the procedure I described above). Adding more ammonia will compound your problems and with the concentrations already high is likely to kill your fish. Some people don't put ammonia in the tank, they use real fish to create ammonia. Usually they use livebearers because they are so tough. Most people now think that this is cruel as the exposure to high ammonia levels makes the cycle fish miserable for the rest of their lives. By putting fish in a tank without nitrifying bacteria you've left yourself no choice. Gouramis will probably survive if the ammonia situation doesnt' get any worse. If your male does have dropsy, removing the ammonia might help but if it's progressed too far you may lose him anyway, sorry.

If there are already fish in there you have a steady source of ammonia. There's nothing you can do except wait for the bacteria to colonise the tank. When you remove water you are removing some of the nitrifying bacteria, but most of them live in the gravel and filter media. The best thing to do is get water testing kits and change about half the water once or twice a day to keep the ammonia diluted to safe concentrations. Test the water before you change it. When the tests start reading 0 for ammnoia and nitrite (nitrate will be about 30-40 I think, might be higher while cycling), take the water changes down to 25% every 2 days. If they remain at 0, your tank is cycled. You still have to do weekly or fortnightly water changes of course. Nitrifying bacteria like well aerated water.

 

[miss_machine]

my sunset gruamie died but the girly is still kickin' it. when i pulled buchta out of the tank this morning he was alot darker in colour and his puffed out belly was white and not orange. sooo sad.
i will go up to walmart today, its the closest place that will have some water tests for it, that i am able to walk to.
thankss guys.

oxxox

the healthy fish say hi!

 

[WILDER]

Sounds like he died of a bacterial infection.
R.I.P.

 

[miss_machine]

i got a test for the ammonia, and its sitting at about 4.0. i'm going to do a water change now hoping it will help lower it a bit.

 

[LauraFrog]

4.0 is very high. Do water changes twice a day until it starts coming down. If you can get to somewhere that sells fish and not just fish accessories, ask for some gravel out of one of the tanks with a lot of fish in it. As when buying fish choose a tank that only has healthy fish.

If you can get some beneficial bacteria treatment this could be helpful. A lot of them are basically placebos - the fish keeper thinks that putting a few drops of smelly liquid in the fish tank cycles it. It's not that simple. Dosing the tank with something like that can help but it doesn't cycle your tank instantly. Apparently a lot of the ones available in the US and UK are rubbish. In my experience and the LFS's the liquid ones are rubbish, they do virtually nothing. The things that claim to lock away ammonia are also not very good, they either make the ammonia appear as 0 on a test when it's still there, or else send the test results through the roof when it's not that bad. I use some stuff called Eco-start, as far as I know you can only get it in Australia though. It's basically a white powder - freeze-dried bacteria on a 'porous mineral base' which is basically some white stuff that turns your water cloudy for a day or so.

If the belly of the sick male is turning white, this does sound like dropsy. From behind or above if his scales start sticking out there's not much hope, sorry. If you remove the ammonia he might survive.

Which one died? Was it the one with dropsy or the female with the thing on her eye?

 

[electric yellow]

if you were to begin a tank, how would you cycle it? all i did was set it up, rinse stuff off that i put in the tank, used a water conditioner, and also stuff to keep the algy away for freshwater fish (i didnt use as much as they told me to put in it) and let it sit for a few days.

You should of cycled the tank before you put the fish in I let me tank cycle for a good two months before putting fish in. After a few weeks we put in some plants and let it run for a few more weeks then added a few neons. We didnt put any other fish in it apart from neons for a good four months. Our gravel was pre-used which was a bonus so that cut down on cycle time but our filter and media was new so it had to be broken in. Our tank hasnt crashed once. With regular water changes and testing your tank should come up good. I had four gourami's. They are all happy campers. Lost one of my dwarf flame ones today The heat got to him while I was at work

In my experience though any gourami is a sensetive fish. if you know anyone with an established aquairium try to steal some of their water if they are near a water change Also make sure as previouslly suggested you only chose fish from a healthy tank. Keeping a subtle eye out for unwell fish in a tank or a quarrantiene tank is a good indication of the quality water and fish that are there.