Poorly Dwarf Gouramis

[-Ian-]

Hi

I bought 2 dwarf gourami's 3 days ago which are currently in a quarantine tank. They seemed ok at first but both became lethargic and have spent a lot of time near the top of the tank, occasionally taking air from the surface. Today I noticed the female had a few small raised white patches and spent a lot of time just drifting in the water with hardly any fin movement. They're sharing the tank with 2 blue rams I bought at the same time who both seem healthy and happy.

I'm guessing it's either whitespot or a bacterial infection but aren't sure which treatment to try.

The tank stats are
Size - 12gal - made up of 75% water from my main tank + 25% tap water
Tempertaure - 24c
Ph - 7.5
Ammonia - 0.3 mg/l
Nitrate - 0
Nitrite - 0

 

[-Ian-]

It's definately not whitespot, the female died overnight, the male now has white patches too

What treatment do you recommend?

 

[Liam]

I used to keep dwarf Gs years ago and was going to keep them again but I haven’t seen any really healthy vigorous ones in the shops. They all look weak by comparison to how sturdy and tough they used to be. Others have said the same here. That’s one issue, I don’t know what the spots are, white spot is like salt grains, if the spots are bigger and kind of fuzzy, its either bacteria of fungus, but I don’t know.
Having ammonia is going to be a problem for them and would make any infections they came with worse. Your quarantine tank needs to be cycled. Rams can be pretty delicate too if the water is not very clean and the tank mature.
Could you transfer some of the filter media from your main tank to the filter in the quarantine that would really help if your main tank has been up and running for a few months.

Sorry about the little gourami, if you replace her wait until you find some really healthy ones, A picture always helps if you can get one. Some folks on here are pretty good about disease, I am not one of them though.

 

[-Ian-]

I'm pretty sure it's bacterial, the spots are too big for whitespot and I've never heard of either whitespot or fungus killing a fish less than 24 hours after the symptoms show. From what I've gathered from googling there's not really much I can do about bacterial infections anyway

I forgot to mention in the original post but I did transfer a mature media sponge into the quarantine tank, they both use fluval 3+ filters which made it a lot easier.

Ian

 

[WILDER]

Yes it is bacterial and gouramis are prone to bacterial infections.
The only concern is there breathing as once it alters not good news.
Turn aeration up in the tank if you can, and get them going on myxazin and pimafix.

 

[-Ian-]

Thanks for the replies but he was a LOT worse when I got home from work, he had large faded patches as well as the white spots and was taking air from the surface. I decided the best thing to do was euthanase him with Clove Oil

 

[WILDER]