Body slime & eye cloud

23 16:06:18

Question

Little Buddy Hi Karen!

I asked you a question recently about my moderately unidentifiable fish, thank you for the answer on that one. I think it's a dwarf cichlid, but I have enclosed a picture of my fish buddy for you to see yourself.

That's not my question though.
I recently diagnosed this aforementioned fish with body slime & eye cloud. His nose has some white patterns on it (not fuzzy or protruding) and both his beautiful blue eyes have become distended with one of them being cloudy.
It seems as if he sometimes bumps into things gently.
ALso, he sometimes digs furiously in the sand, swims halfways across the tank and then spits out the sand and goes back to dig some more. The fish lady said that is probably nesting behaviour.
He generally swims around or hides in this fake forest I have in the tank. That could be the scratching the package speaks of as one of the symptoms?

I went to my fish store (Tropical Hut) and the lady said he had Cloudy Eye/fungal infection. She said to treat my tank with TRIPLE SULFA, Anti-Bacterial Fish Medication ($16).
I bought 2 boxes, 10 sachets in each. Ouch.
It treats Hemorrhagic Septicemia, Mouth fungus, Body slime/eye cloud, Bacterial Gill Disease (my bala sharks might have that, i'm not sure, they sometimes hang out higher than usual but have done so for the last 2 weeks and ) and Fin & Tail rot. None of my fish appear to have fin rot.

I guess I just wanted to hear what you have to say about that. I have removed the carbon filters (still aerating), put in 4 sachets (40ish gallon tank), waited 24 hours, added 4 more and tomorrow I'll do a 25% water change.
After that, I will repeat this treatment for a total of 4 runs. After that, I will do a final 25% water change and then add fresh filters.
I haven't seen any improvement in my little fish guy but we'll see how he looks tomorrow.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Thanks again,
Jeremy!

Answer
Hey Jeremy,
I do agree with you on that your mystery fish does greatly resemble a dwarf cichlid, or some cichlid of one kind or another. At first glance, he looks like a Krib. But kribs don't usually have blue eyes.

But anyway, that's not the point. You needed my opinion about his sickness.

I can't tell much by the picture. But He does look a little stressed and hazy in his coloration.

You say he has an distended eye, cloudy eyes, and some cloudy body slime?

This could certainly be a bacterial infection. Popeye and cloudy eye can be related to injury but more common is a buildup of waste in the gravel and dissolved pollutants. The best thing to do first besides get him on a good medication is a large 30-50% water change and a very thorough gravel vacuuming. You don't want excess waste in the tank that just flourishes with bad bacteria. It would probably be good to try to do daily 50% water changes because clean water can really help fish heal plus it removes old medication that is no longer 'active' as well as remove excess bad bacteria in the tank. I would just re-dose the medication after each water change.

While most medications say to wait so many days before doing a water change you should really try to do them as often as you can. Medications typically loose their effective after so many hours in the tank so changing out the old water is a very good thing to do.

Oh and the fish lady is right about your cichlid's behavior. He is doing what many cichlid species do when they are attempting to "nest" or prepare for spawning. It's also a territory thing too.

I think you are doing everything right. Your little guy has got some issues to recover from but cichlids can be tough fish and with teh right good care he just might make 100% recovery.

Best of luck and I hope this helps!
Karen~

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