Dropsy?

[misterking]

A couple of weeks ago I added a few fish to my pond, 4 butterfly koi and 6 goldfish (2 red, 2 white/red, 2 shubunkin).

One of the butterfly koi had been hiding a bit and I realised this was down to fungus on its dorsal and tail fins. I treated with protozin in a quarantine tank but this was in vain as it died after a day of treatment. My theory is it had already had finrot when I bought it, (it had frayed fins which I couldnt see due to distortion from the bag *thumbsdow) and this became fungal.

I've also noticed yesterday one goldfish has dropsy. The new fish have caused a slight ammonia spike which, although it is resolving, I believe will have caused this. It still swims well and feeds well so I'm guessing so far internal damage is minimal.

I'll put her in quarantine tomorrow and treat with an appropriate treatment and some salt to help draw out the excess fluid, has anyone had any experience with dropsy and the likelihood of fatality?

 

[misterking]

No input, seriously?

Wow it's quiet this weekend.

 

[temull2]

I've only made the mistake of throwing multiple fish in at the same time once in my fish career. Most of my fish started getting dropsy and other issues, so I did a 50% water change, and put a few of the fish in a different tank, just to keep the ammmonia from rising any more. Once the ammonia was at a normal leve, they were back to normal, although one fish got it pretty bad and still swims a little lopsided.

 

[misterking]

Thanks a lot,

Well the goldfish is in quarantine, eating and swimming well, with salted water and being treated with myaxin, so hopefully this will help.

I don't think it was a case of too many at one time.. they're all only small and the pond is 11x9x3ft deep and only had a 10 inch ghost koi in. I do suspect my LFS for the route of the disease, all of the butterfly koi have since died with no physical issues apart from loss of colour, with my water readings fine (ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 10) apart from 1 who seems to have disappeared completely.

 

[Lotus]

Dropsy is generally a symptom, rather than a disease. It indicates internal organ failure. Sometimes, you'll get lucky and the fish will survive. Most of the time, they don't.

Keep an eye on the other fish for signs. If it's a bacterial infection, you'll need to treat all the fish.

 

[misterking]

The thing is, apart from the obvious swelling, the fish seems fine. It swims well and eats well and looks as happy as anything, so I don't think it's down to internal organ failure. I'll keep treating for now and keep an eye on the other fish, and just hope the swelling goes down.

There is one missing scale on it, could this possibly be a reason if bacteria entered here and caused the dropsy?

 

[ira_desent]

Dropsy survival

A while back, I did have a bad case of dropsy when I added too many fish at once. 4 of the fish got dropsy, so I qt them and gave them tetracycline on some flakes so they would eat it. That killed whatever infection they got, but their organs failed by than point. From then on I had to keep a little salt in the water. This kept them alive for more than 2 years. Consider it dialysis...
(I'm sure they'd still be alive today if it weren't for a bad moving experience)

I used Epsom salt for them, and kept the tank stocked with other fish used to brackish environments. Aquarium salts will work too, but I'm on a budget
Don't use sodium chloride tho, this will pull the water out of the fish but also get absorbed in exchange.

Let me know how it goes!

 

[misterking]

Well the little guy isn't getting any smaller, although he's still active as ever. I still don't think his organs have failed as he's eating and processing foods normally.

I read on the internet a treatment called octozin by the same makers of myaxin can help with dropsy so I'm going to try this next week, he's not responding to the myaxin at all. The salt concentration is quite high now but he's still fine, the instructions on the box told me to add 1 level tbsp per 3 gallons of water and spread it out over a few days, so I added two the first day and 1 every day since then to fill the 15 gallon "quota".

 

[misterking]

Good news

The goldfish has been in quarantine just over a week, with 3tbsp salt per gallon, high concentration I know but it hasn't had any bad effects, the directions for using it as a supportive mechanism were that concentration.

After it gradually grew in size over the last week, yesterday it started to go a bit quiet (slow swimming, generally looking lethargic having been quite active all week) I thought it was curtains, until this morning when I noticed, he's started getting smaller!

I'd bought another treatment called eSHa 2000 over the internet which arrived this morning, says it treats dropsy when not due to kidney failure so I thought I might aswell try it, reviews had set it up as a bit of a miracle treatment, even in the leading fishkeeping magazine over here. Anyway, I put the first day's treatment in as soon as I got it, and low and behold within hours he's almost half the size he was.

So combined, the high salt concentration and eSHa 2000 seem to be drawing the fluid out of its body and I couldn't be happier I'll finish the 3 day course and leave him in there for a while until I can be sure he's back to normal, before releasing him back into the pond, he's swimming about like normal right now and even surface fed.

I don't want to advertise but, if you can get hold of it (I know quite a large amount of people on the forum are from the US, not sure if it's sold over there) I strongly reccommend the treatment.

Again I'll keep you all updated, but hopefully it's looking good!