sick frontosa - pics included, please help identify

[mveale]

Hi all,

Symptoms: white specs all over his body, he twists and turns a lot and scratches his body with his pectorial fins. he's sulky too, i guess i would be too.

Recently he's also developed raised sores beside his gill plate / eye. see pics attached









I'd love to know if anyone has had similar symptoms with their fish, or if you have any experience in dealing with it.

The poor fish has been through the mill lately, he recently recovered from a prolapsed rectum

He's in a 150 litre quarantine tank in my fish room. and has been for a couple of months.

all other fish are fine, I've been doing regular water changes
(every 5 days approx) but he's showing no signs of any improvement
in close to two weeks now.. im getting desperate, hope you can help.
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[lv8pv]

That sure looks like an unhappy fish my friend. I'll be crossing my fingers for you and him.

Wish you both a fast recovery.

[Charles]

i will move it to illness section for you.
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[davespeed3]

I wish I could help, but can only suggest you also post on one of the Frontosa forums. Frontosa.com or Cyphos.com.
All the best.

[the General]

Hello,

My tank has gone through something similar to that. About a year ago the fish started developing similar white 'nodules' on their fins and sometimes their skin. I tried to treat it with antibiotics first and then with parasite clear, neither had any effect whatsoever. Then, while skimming the internets, I found:
http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/management/Lawler_Lymphocystis.html

In my case, I'm fairly certain that that is what my fish have gone through, because it was contagious and all of the fish went through it. They all got over it though in about a month tops (except for my JD which seems to always have some fin nodules). Some of the fish did seem irritated and itchy.

Your frontosa pictures look very similar to the sort of thing I was seeing in my tank, so I thought I'd share

Hope that helps!

[keith.burgoyne]

I've had a few betta fishes with a similar sounding disease. In addition, my suddenly-new-to-me Jack Dempsey may also have this. What you've described sounds an awful lot like ich.

I appear to be too new around here to be able to post links, so I'll include an excerpt from a site I've been reading recently. The article in question is pretty complete and suggests the following:

"A fish which is infected with the ich parasite will usually give its first signs of infection by scratching against objects in the tank .... Usually one fish will start and others will follow over a number of days as the parasite multiplies in the tank ... after the scratching starts the next sign will be the classic salt or sugar looking grains on either the skin or the gills of the fish."

Turning up the heat of your tank to about 30 degrees celcius will kill ich and some parasite treatments like Coppersafe are known to work. You should take note of the temperature tolerance levels of your fish in that tank, and if they can handle that amount of warmth you might want to try that for a few days. Some people, however, prefer commercial ich treatments, as high temperatures can kill some fish and stress others. I've used Coppersafe with success before.

If you google-search "ich or whitespot Western Cichlid Forum", the second result for me is the site I am talking about.

I hope that helps.