Oscar needs help! Bad Popeye!!

[Bruce1975]

Hi everyone, I’m not sure what else to do here...I’ve been dealing with Popeye in my Oscar since September. It had gotten better a few times and each time I thought it would heal, it wouldn’t; it actually got progressively worse.

I should add that the main problem I am having is that after he got Popeye, he cut his eye on some decor I had in the tank and it repeatedly got infected. It is now the worst it has ever been, and I don’t know what else to do.

I’ve treated him with 3 different medications: kanaplex, melafix, and fish amoxicillin. The kanaplex worked really well, but I think after I treated him a few times with it, it became ineffective. The melafix didn’t do anything noticeable, and the fish amoxicillin worked at fighting the infection pretty well, but it didn’t help the swelling at all. I don’t know if I need to mention that I’ve also given him Stess Guard and it healed the wound that kept getting infected.

His eye is now sticking out more than an inch from his head now, and it didn’t help that yesterday he got rough with the other Oscar in the tank (I had them separated in the main tank because I am trying to lower the ammonia in the quarantine tank. I had them apart from each other but they kept getting around/over the barrier.)

Next thing I know, I come home and they were both together. Bruce(the Oscar with Popeye), had a vein that was prominent on the bottom of his protruding eye and it had starting bleeding. I separated them again. A little while later, they were with each other... again. And this time, there were chunks of flesh floating on top of the sand at the bottom of the tank. I freaked out, because now his eye was bleeding and there was also some off yellow liquid coming out(I assume it’s the liquid that is pooled up behind his eye, as it has gone down in size a tiny bit since yesterday).

I’ve attached a photo of what it looks like now. I don’t know what else to do. Do I medicate him again? I’m just concerned because now medications don’t seem to work well on him, if at all. And now he has a huge gash under his eye. Plus the swelling, and I’m concerned it will get infected for the 6th(?) time. I’ve been working on him for 5 months now...

I have contacted some veterinarians and haven’t gotten responses back. I can contact this other guy, but he’s 3 hrs and 45 minutes from me and and I feel like if I put Bruce in the net, then a bucket(?) he’ll die from stress or rip his eye out of the socket.

Does anyone have an idea on what I can do? Or advice? Anything really...

I’m sorry this is so lengthy

 

[Barry Tetra]

Do 75% water changes and substrate clean.

What are your water parameters?

 

[mark4785]

I would recommend cleaning the filtration media and remove 80% of the aquarium water for 3-4 days everyday in a bucket of aquarium water to reduce the concentration of the bacteria in the filter media.

As the Popeye is quite bad you need to source and use an anti-bacterial containing ingredients: Benzalkonium chloride 0.64% w/w, formaldehyder 0.24% w/w, malachite green 0.17% w/w, acriflavine hydrochlodire 0.11% w/w to effectively treat Popeye. Waterlife Myxazin is one such effective product with these ingredients.

 

[Bruce1975]

Sorry I didn’t respond, I’m supposed to get emails when people respond on my thread but I never got anything? So I just assumed nobody replied lol

Fortunately my fish’s eye is a lot better. His eye wound healed up after a couple days and it even shrank down and looks almost completely normal. Thank you to everyone who replied!