tigar barb on last legs!

Question
hi karen,
i have a tiger barb that has been through the wars recently and tonight seems to be about to die. First it swelled up to twice his mates size from the belly. we seem to have cleared this by using myxazin a mild anti(biotic?) and feeding peas. but then just as it was returning to normal a twin puncture wound appeared on its side. at first it looked like a couple of scales out of place and small stab marks so i removed a few things that looked like likely stabbers (a shell and ornament). it quickly got worse and more scales fell off (its now  8mm dia) and raw red looking in a matter of hours. its mate was hassling his wound so i set up little tank with water, weed and gravel from old tank transferred him and the nutriment levels have not spiked and carried on the myxazin treatment (even though the 5 day dose was up). then the local fish shop man (who i quite trust) said that i could also be applied direct with a soft brush and that he thought thought it was an ulcer. this we did but after the first couple of doses no more improvement was seen and so i stopped and tried dosing with melafix. (though i didn't leave a gap between them. now 9 days later his wound looks much the same however tonight i came back to find him resting in some weeds on surface and just panting then wen in the rest of tank just at the mercy of the filter. now and then he can swim alight then just to do triple somersault and back to panting. seemed to eat food earlier as i did not notice this development then (4 hours ago).
can you think of any last thing that may help. neither treatment seems to be helping and now he's either so weak from it or he developed a secondary swimbladder thing.
yours jago

Answer
Hi Jago,
The poor Tiger Barb, I feel sorry for the poor thing. I'm not sure what could have happened but the best thing I can guess is either the little barb got a bacterial infection from a scrap or the other fish picked on him until they created such a wound.

The wound may not be able to heal because of an infection. And it is possible you could have a strain of bacteria that are stubborn or need a combination of treatments. Did you make sure to do water changes as often as possible? This is very important when fish are healing from wounds. If they are living in dirty water this will slow healing tremendously.

I think the poor Tiger barb is probably at his end. You know you did your best. The best thing you could do is a moderate water change just to make sure he has clean water and to insure he has a support or a resting area in the form of plants in order to get away from the current.

I'm really sorry about the barb...Sometimes there is nothing we can do when when have to deal with tough illnesses such as this.

Best wishes and feel free to write with anymore concerns!
Karen~