Silver Shark will bloody fins...Is it fin rot?

[Eleonora]

I have a silver shark that has his fins looking like they are bloody . Is it fin rot? He has had this before and it cleared up for a little while when I treated the tank with a multi cure, but it's come back.

Nitrite is good, Ph is good, Ammonia is good. I rotate the cleaning cycle fortnightly. One week its a water change and gravel clean and the next is a filter clean (I have bio filter).

It's a 180Litre community tank shared with snails, black widows, tetras, guppies and dwarf gourami's. No other fish is suffering from anything and are quite active.

I've restarted the multi cure treatment. I'm thinking that I may have finished the treatment too early.

If it's fin rot, they why is he suffering from it? Water condition seems good to me. The colour of the water is a bit iffy. There is a yellow tinge to it that has been there since I introduced a LFS bought small tree stump.

Any ideas anyone?

 

[FrankSlapperinni]

What do you mean when you say "water conditions are 'good'"? you need to be more specific(exact test results).
He could have gotten the parasite from the pet store (parasites/decease's mostly lead from new arrivals or the fish had the disease all along)
the tree stump may be affecting them negatively because it may have been made for a terrarium instead of an aquarium, in which case it would not be treated
to prevent leaching chemicals.
The Bala Shark (also known as a silver shark) can grow to 10" and needs an aquarium of at least 70 gallons (264 liters). they are aggressive and unsuitable for a community aquarium.

 

[R_W]

My guess would be septicemia.

I had a similar problem with one of my balas a few weeks ago. It looked as if it had been "rammed" by another fish, and I assumed that the red fins were due to the apparent abuse it had suffered. I moved it to another tank that was already being treated with Melafix, hoping that that would be an appropriate rememdy for its injuries. Melafix improved the appearance of the bala's injury to its side, but the redness did not go away from the fins and began to move from the fins to the the bala's underside. Needless to say, with increased stress, the bala also began to show signs of ich. Things did not go so well from there.....

later found these on Google, and they seem to be on point.

http/www.auspet.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/000064.html

"The best treatment I have found for septicemia is Tetracycline. The problem with Tetracycline is after you treat the tank for five days it can become toxic. You can tell fairly easily when it starts becoming toxic. It will start to foam on the top of the water. After treating the tank for five days I would recommend doing a 30% water change, and another 20% to 30% water change five days after that. Septicemia is hard to cure not only because of the disease but because of the toxicity of the medication when left in the tank too long. Hope this helps."

http/www.everythingfishy.com/med_info.html

"Bruising, the appearance of blood under the skin, most often starting near the edge of the body at fin "joints", is a good sign to quarantine the fish and start treatment with Maracyn 2. It works as well as Tetracycline, without the tank discoloration that TC causes. Generally the illness is ordinary septicemia. I also use Maracyn-Two to treat a fish that won't eat, but I do it in a quarantine tank. If the revival is a one treatment miracle, often the problem was stress, due to aggression by tank-mates. If we go the full 5 days, I may have prevented the entire tank from being infected."

 

[Eleonora]

The chemistry of my tank water is:
NH3 2.4mg/L
NO2 0.1mg/L
GH 120mg/L CaCO3
KH 60mg/L
Ph 7.6