# Sick Killifish



## Siir (Nov 5, 2009)

I've got a female Golden Wonder Killifish that recently has been developing issues.

She inhabited a 30 gallon cubic tank, kept at 79 degrees F, with:

-3 cory cats
-3 female odessa barbs
-1 dwarf gourami
-1 pleco
-3 lemon tetras
-5 brilliant rasboras

The tank has been set up since mid-June and I purchased the Killi probably in mid-late August. She was always the more curious fish in the tank and would come up to the glass and follow whoever was standing outside back and forth as they walked past it. But then about 2 weeks ago she became a lot more jumpy and instead of coming to the front of the tank, she'd race to the back and stay in the far corner.

Then about 5 days ago she just started sinking from her usually spot at the surface. She would use her pectorals to try and swim back to the top, but she was positioned straight up and down and couldn't level out. She would sink a little and then start paddling fast to pull herself back up and then sink again, in a continuous cycle. I figured that maybe she was just old and maybe dying, so I pulled her out of that tank and put her in a 10 gallon rectangular hospital tank, filled just with 2-3 gallons of water a couple inches deep so that she could pull herself to the surface and eat if needed.

She's still alive, and she's eating just fine. I have no knowledge of fish diseases though so I took her to the store that I bought her from and asked them to inspect her to see if they could tell if anything was wrong. They said she had clamped fins and told me it was usually related to water conditions. I tested ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates in the 30 gallon tank, all are low. And in the hospital tank she still keeps her tail clamped and will only swim with her pectorals at feeding time, but otherwise rests at the bottom. Just earlier today I noticed a whitish colored band along her side and it looks like she has a lot of excess mucus hanging off of her tail. The store gave me Maracyn (just plain Maracyn, not Maracyn 2) to treat her with. It's been three days and if anything I'd say it's worse (the excessive mucus is new to me). The Maracyn says to use one packet per 10 gallons, but I know if I filled her 10 gallon tank completely, she wouldn't be able to get to the surface to feed, and would probably be stressed in trying to get to the surface.. So, on my dad's suggestion, I mixed one pack with the minimum amount of water to disolve it, and then mix 1/5 of the solution into her tank daily (her 10 gallon hospital tank only has about 2-3 gallons).

Outside of clamped fins and mucus, the only other "symptoms" I can see are that she _may_ be swollen. She looks fatter than pictures of other Golden Wonders I've seen on the net, but she looks just as big as she's always been since I've had her, as far as I can tell. So I don't know if that means she's always had an infection since I got her, or if she's just naturally bigger. She also seems to flex her body sharply to the side every now and then, as though she was trying to pull free from some restraint. Also there is a spot right on top of her head, right in the middle about halfway between her eyes, she's had that ever since I got her. On some days the spot looks like an indent that matches the rest of her body while on other days it looks like a white bump. The color change can happen in a matter of seconds as before she developed these other problems, she might swim up to the glass looking normal, and then I'd throw food in and the spot would turn bright white in a matter of seconds and then a minute or two latter go back to her body color.

I have no idea what it is. It's an isolated spot, it's not spreading nor has it showed up on any other fish, so I figured maybe it was a scrape or naturally part of her anatomy. The fact it changes color and is isolated didn't lead me to think it was ich or a fungus. But I don't know.

Any thoughts on what I should do?


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## Calmer (Mar 9, 2008)

See on this web site if you can recognize the disease from the pictures shown.
http://badmanstropicalfish.com/fish_palace/tropicalfish_disease_identification.html#Bacterial

Here is something about Maracyn/Maracyn 2:
http://www.aquaria.info/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=374&theme=Printer
This is a tough disease to diagnose as the symptoms are common to many diseases.


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## Siir (Nov 5, 2009)

Her symptoms don't match any of those enough for me to say with any confidence what is causing her problems. Thanks though.

I described her symptoms while at the store the other day and the guy said that it might simply be constipation or old age. Aside from swimming straight up and down in the water column, and producing a filmy layer of mucous, there weren't at that time any obvious symptoms that I could see aside from some awkward spasm motions every now and again. I've fed her nothing but brine shrimp, once a day for the past 5 or so days, in addition to treatments of Maracyn and Maracyn 2, as was recommended by the store owner, but as far as I can tell there's not been any substantial feces on the bottom of her tank (i.e. more seems to be going in than coming out), and no improvement.

So, I figure he could have been correct about constipation. However, in the past couple of days she's developed red, irritated looking skin, as though she were sun burned. That, coupled with the filmy layer of mucous are symptoms for Trichodina, as far as I can tell from searching the web. Though nearly every website that I can find that deals with Trichodina and treatments for it are very specifically in reference to Koi and Goldfish in pond settings. Could a Killifish in an aquarium contract it? If so, how would I go about treating it?

On a tangent, since I started the Maracyn treatments, the bubbles generated by the air stone in her tank seem to be building up substantially on the surface and makes everything look scummy and the surface look like a cesspool. Is that normal? I've done two water changes since I've begun the treatments due to this, the water changes seem to help for a while but by the next day everything looks scummy again.


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