# Sick green terror, on abx, still swollen



## nika (Apr 30, 2013)

My boyfriend and I were given a fishtank by a friend who was moving about 3 months ago so we are inexperienced but trying to learn more. About 5 days ago one of our green terrors got sick. We have tried googling what is wrong with it but there is so much conflicting info so I thought I will try asking you guys!

tank: 125 gallons. I tested the water the day we noticed the problem: ph 6.4, ammonia .25, nitrates 10 to 20 ppm, nitrites 0, GH 180, KH 0, temp 78F

2 green terrors (about 8 inches) 
2 blood red parrots (a bit bigger than the terrors)
1 pleco
4 mbunas (just little guys, added about 3 weeks ago. 2 are all yellow, one is white and black horizontal stripes and one used to look like that but is turning grey and apparently is turning into a male from what I have read. I think they are mbunas anyways, the yellow ones are for sure)
2 ropefish
2 angel fish

All the other fish are fine, showing no symptoms.

So about 5 days ago we noticed one green terror with swollen abdomen, breathing heavily, floating up and down in the corner of the tank, upright but slightly tilted. It's mouth appears a bit swollen when it's breathing, and there were some red spots in it's mouth. We haven't seen it eat in the last 5 days or so.

We went to a local aquarium store and the guy working there thought it was probably a bacterial infection, so he sold us tetracycline antibiotics. We filled a 10 gallon tank with water from the main tank and put the fish in and have done 2 days of treatment with the antibiotics (the package says to re-dose every 24 hours but the guy at the store said only do it every 48 hours so that is what we have done.)

After we gave the first dose I was reading online and started to think maybe it was just constipation. It has only had one small stringy poop that we have seen in the last 5 days. I've read that epsom salts are good but a google search for tetracycline and epsom indicates they interact so I don't think we should do it now. We tried feeding it peas as I have also read to be a good laxative but it wont eat. Today we noticed some weird stuff coming from it's rectum and I wonder if maybe it is impacted with eggs?! I don't even know if it is female?!

Anyways any thoughts or advice would be appreciated, it hasn't shown any improvement from the antibiotics so far, altho it doesn't seem to have red spots in it\s mouth anymore. Should we try manually cleaning the stuff from it's rectum? Should we try other treatments for constipation? I didn't see the article about bloat on this forum until after we started the antibiotics so not sure if that would have helped.

thanks for any advice, I'll try to post pictures


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## nika (Apr 30, 2013)

I want to add pictures, and I put them on imgur, but there is no "get imbedded codes" link like on the tutorial on this site. Here is a link the the album with the pictures of what is coming out of it's rectum:

http://nika44.imgur.com


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## nika (Apr 30, 2013)

sorry, I forgot there are also 3 polka dotted loaches and a clown loach, all quite small. My boyfriend does weekly water changes, I think only about 10% tho. We also recently added live plants to the aquarium, about a week before the fish started showing any symptoms. I think that is everything!


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## SavemeDempsey (Apr 30, 2013)

tbh Im not an expert in fish keeping, Im not entirely sure what is wrong with the green terror but in my experience usually the most common cause for a fishies illness is stress. Salt helps alot with stress, it helps the fish absorb water also which is sort of how they drink and epsom salts (magnesium sulphate) in particular is a really good fish laxative. I would probably take the medicated water out and put it through a 15-60 min salt bath (depending how stressed it gets while adding salt) add the salt already dissolved in a smaller amount of water and add it slowly so the fish gets used to it, I have used a concentration as strong as 2 tablespoons epsom salt & 1/2 tablespoon aqua/lake salt per gallon of water.

From my experience with fish and reading a multitude of forums is medicines can somtimes do more harm then good if the its a mis-diagnosis, if not too your fish then definately too your wallet  personally I always try and source natural remedies before going to the LPS.


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## SavemeDempsey (Apr 30, 2013)

oh and btw my jack dempsey looked more bloated then that when he finally received some medical attention  I also thought it was male its whole life untill it bloated up and thought it could possibly be eggs aswell, l dont think it was though just a severe case of constipation..


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## nika (Apr 30, 2013)

thanks for your replies! I'm concerned because the weird growth out of his rectum is getting much larger, it still looks like the one I posted in the picture but it's bigger now. I don't think he could have a bowel movement if he wanted because it's all blocked with this growth


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## nika (Apr 30, 2013)

The first photo is the original one I took when I first posted. Today it was bigger, more white stuff. So I took it out of the tank and gently cleaned the white stuff off, it came off on a q tip and the tip was red after. I took a picture with him out of the tank. The last one is what he looks like now., still a red bump coming out but the white stuff is cleaned off. Could this be a prolapsed anus? Or an infection of some sort?


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