[mc12345]

Hello,
Hopefully someone can help me. I recently had some issues with my gold severum after a crazy nitrate spike in my tank. All of my other fish were fine except for my gold severum. He stopped eating and had growths on his side near his eye. It cleared up and he started eating again. This was almost 2 months ago. Now I woke up this morning and his eye has swelled overnight out of no where. I am almost 100% sure its popeye (it's also only 1 eye on the opposite side of the initial growth issue) and set up a quarantine tank. I have other fish that may either pick on him and I also don't want to expose them to any medicine unnecessarily if I need to use later. I have read that people have used Melafix and/or epsom salt to treat popeye. Instead of doing a dip, some have added directly to the quarantine tank (overtime). I cannot move him back and forth for salt baths. He violently thrashed when being moved and he tried to jump out of the container. To avoid additional stress, I will be adding to the tank instead. It is only a 20 gallon as its all I have at the moment, but does anyone know how much epsom salt to add each day to gradually increase potency? Any help would be appreciated.

This poor guy has been through so much lately and he seems very sensitive to things. I've never had a problem with any of my other fish in the tank, so I'm wondering if he was poorly bred...or unethically bred, leading to additional health problems. He's previously gotten ick, a fungal infection, growths, and now popeye when no other fish including other cichlids have ever gotten sick. I've never had so many problems with a single fish.

 

[Auballagh]

I'm sorry your Gold Severum is giving you so many problems.
Usually those are healthy, vigorous and can be some pretty tough characters at times when placed in a community tank. It's possible you got one from a batch that had been excessively line-bred (brother-sister spawnings), through too many generations. Or, maybe you just wound up with a sickly one.
Who knows?
But for now, lets see what we can do to help that Cichlid.

• Quarantine: I like that you have placed the fish into a quarantine/hospital tank. The 20 gallon is a good one (mine is currently just a 10 gallon). Keeping your stressed Severum away from all of that community tank business, might be a good thing now for it.
• Treatment: I'm not much of a fan of treating aggressively with medications for popeye. It's some kind of bacterial infection, and slinging meds at the problem will almost always make it worse. What you CAN do is to place this Cichlid onto an aggressive water change schedule. With popeye, just pushing some serious amounts of water through the tank to eliminate Nitrates and (most importantly) bring the bacteria count down in the water to almost nothing, may be the best thing you can do for your Severum. Build up the water changes slowly until you are pushing anywhere from 60 to 75 percent water through the quarantine tank - DAILY. Also, I would add one tablespoon of non-iodized (aquarium) salt for 3 gallons of water in that tank. That is mostly just to prevent opportunistic infections or fungus from attacking the fish. Add salt back to the amount returned to the tank after water changes (salt doesn't evaporate and will build up in the water). And of course, ensure your filtration for the quarantine tank is kept clean by rinsing in tank water and is running optimally.
• Follow-On Care: Feeding your Severum and Cichlids with high-quality food, will help to maintain their health and well-being a lot. Just as it is in us humans... providing a high quality diet for your Cichlids will help to build up their immune systems, and prevent sickness or disease outbreaks. Throw out all pellet or flake food that is six months in age or older. Refrigerate all new foods. Provide a variety of Red (high protein) and Green (high Veggie Content) pellet and flake foods. Offer weekly 'treats' of pealed peas, weighted/rubber banded pieces of sliced zucchini, fresh peeled shrimp pieces and live earth worms! (yumm!).

With a good bit of work, and by upping your game a bit in tank maintenance and feeding - your Severum (and the rest of your community tank occupants) should pull through this thing, just fine.

 

[mc12345]

I'm sorry your Gold Severum is giving you so many problems.
Usually those are healthy, vigorous and can be some pretty tough characters at times when placed in a community tank. It's possible you got one from a batch that had been excessively line-bred (brother-sister spawnings), through too many generations. Or, maybe you just wound up with a sickly one.
Who knows?
But for now, lets see what we can do to help that Cichlid.

• Quarantine: I like that you have placed the fish into a quarantine/hospital tank. The 20 gallon is a good one (mine is currently just a 10 gallon). Keeping your stressed Severum away from all of that community tank business, might be a good thing now for it.
• Treatment: I'm not much of a fan of treating aggressively with medications for popeye. It's some kind of bacterial infection, and slinging meds at the problem will almost always make it worse. What you CAN do is to place this Cichlid onto an aggressive water change schedule. With popeye, just pushing some serious amounts of water through the tank to eliminate Nitrates and (most importantly) bring the bacteria count down in the water to almost nothing, may be the best thing you can do for your Severum. Build up the water changes slowly until you are pushing anywhere from 60 to 75 percent water through the quarantine tank - DAILY. Also, I would add one tablespoon of non-iodized (aquarium) salt for 3 gallons of water in that tank. That is mostly just to prevent opportunistic infections or fungus from attacking the fish. Add salt back to the amount returned to the tank after water changes (salt doesn't evaporate and will build up in the water). And of course, ensure your filtration for the quarantine tank is kept clean by rinsing in tank water and is running optimally.
• Follow-On Care: Feeding your Severum and Cichlids with high-quality food, will help to maintain their health and well-being a lot. Just as it is in us humans... providing a high quality diet for your Cichlids will help to build up their immune systems, and prevent sickness or disease outbreaks. Throw out all pellet or flake food that is six months in age or older. Refrigerate all new foods. Provide a variety of Red (high protein) and Green (high Veggie Content) pellet and flake foods. Offer weekly 'treats' of pealed peas, weighted/rubber banded pieces of sliced zucchini, fresh peeled shrimp pieces and live earth worms! (yumm!).

With a good bit of work, and by upping your game a bit in tank maintenance and feeding - your Severum (and the rest of your community tank occupants) should pull through this thing, just fine.

Thank you. I just ordered New Life Spectrum Thera+A with Garlic and actually bought a new container of food 2 weeks ago. Also, I read that aquarium and epsom salt are not interchangeable and that epsom salt is a better choice for popeye as it helps with the fluid build up behind the eye. Plus, epsom salt is all I have. Could this be used instead? And if its 1 tbsp for 3 gallons, there is approx. 16-17 gallons in the tank so, should I add 5 tbsp for the whole tank? And should this be done daily or just one time?

 

[Auballagh]

You can say there is this thing called 'aquarium salt'. But really, all you need is just simple NON-IODIZED Sodium Chloride (NaCl). That is - cheap ol' table salt.
And sure, if you want to add those Epsom salts instead? Go ahead! I've never heard of it being used to treat bacteria infections before... but, at least it won't hurt.
Just be sure to up the frequency and percentage of those water changes for the quarantine tank your sick Severum is in.
That will probably do more to help this fish than anything else you attempt.

 

[mc12345]

You can say there is this thing called 'aquarium salt'. But really, all you need is just simple NON-IODIZED Sodium Chloride (NaCl). That is - cheap ol' table salt.
And sure, if you want to add those Epsom salts instead? Go ahead! I've never heard of it being used to treat bacteria infections before... but, at least it won't hurt.
Just be sure to up the frequency and percentage of those water changes for the quarantine tank your sick Severum is in.
That will probably do more to help this fish than anything else you attempt.

I actually went to my local pet store to pick up a few things for the quarantine tank. I got aquarium salt. He also looks like he has a secondary fungal infection too. I got Pimafix to use with the Melafix I already had, which I have read good things about. A lot of people use these together when adding new fish or in quarantine tanks because it helps with fungal AND bacterial infections. It is not as harsh as the antibiotics they had, which I won't use until a last resort. I'll see how he does with the clean water and go from there. Want to let him settle before adding anything else to the tank. Hopefully something will work. Fingers crossed.