Red Tailed Black Shark Illness, Please Help :'(

[LindsayRitchie]

I am absolutely gutted about my oldest fish (Red Tailed Black Shark.)  After coming home from work tonight I have noticed a really red raised/bloated area under his belly. Does anyone have any advice they can give me or is his old age kicking in :'( 

It is in a 350l tank, well stabilised for years and all the other fish are fine and water parameters from API freshwater master kit are Ammonia 0PPM, Nitrate 0ppm, nitrite 0ppm

It's worth noting that I have a breeding pair of angels who are quite narky but not sure they could have done this?? 
 
Please help me if you can, i'm absolutely gutted :'( 
 
Lindsay 

 

[RCA]

Welcome and sorry to see your fish is ill. Good to see the pics, they always help. Initial thoughts from me, is it looks like it maybe an internal bacterial infection, or from a trauma an infection has set in. What do you have in your medication stock? Hopefully someone else will come and advise.

 

[DeanoL83]

I had a similar thing happen to my red tail black shark just a couple of weeks ago.  I noticed a red mark like that on his side, it looked like maybe he had been bitten and it had gotten infected.  Over the next couple of days he started to swim closer to the top of the tank and looked like he was trying to breathe from the surface.  I had no medication or spare tank so tried to keep the water as clean as possible by doing more regular water changes.  Unfortunately, a couple days later he passed.
 
So, sorry I couldn't be any help, but if it is similar to what happened to mine I hope that some of the experts can read this soon.
 
 
 
Do you have a spare tank you could isolate him in to make treatment easier???

 

[Far_King]

I came home yesterday to something similar I can only think is Dropsy
 
My poor red tail shark was nose down in an amazon sword at the back of the tank and I could barely see her.  I managed to make out some raised scales near the tail (still in the black), some almost looking bubbly.
 
I immediately did a massive water change and added paraguard and some garlic flakes in the hope they help clear up any bacteria or parasitical infection.  I'm unable to get any pictures as she was so far back but it looks similar to your guys chest.
 
She's an old girl too and is absolutely massive.  I'm just hoping she recovers