| Gas bubble disease strikes again :-( |
Subject: Gas bubble disease strikes again :-( by suey2 on 4/10/2007 19:59:54 Satsuma, my female pearlscale, has gas bubble disease. She's in a tank with a female ranchu, Lester, who is absolutely fine with not a hint of a problem. She's been quite ill recently with what I thought was swimbladder problems and a bacterial infection - she's been floaty and was doing stringy white poo full of bubbles. I treated for this and the stringy poo stopped but the floating continued so I've been trying peas but to no avail. She's also been huffing and puffing a lot, I put this down to the effort of trying to swim while floaty. This afternoon I saw she had developed gas bubbles on her body. I immediately turned off the heater, changed half the water with colder water and turned on the air bubbles in a bid to balance the gas in the water with the gas in her body. She's not improved but I don't know how long it would take to show a difference. I'm now worried that the bubbles have already come out inside her body and gills and is the real reason for the floatyness and huffing and puffing. I've seen it before in Iggy, a male pearlscale I got free from the lfs as he was a 'sinker'. His sinking got better but he also developed GBD. The first time it went away but I don't know why, the second time he got it it wouldn't go and eventually we had to euthanise him as he stopped eating. I think he had other problems too. I've also seen it in fry (Satsuma was the mum). For such a rare disease it seems to like my fish a lot. I've seen on a seahorse forum (I know, she's not a seahorse  ) that it can be caused by a bacterial infection where the bacteria give off gases which accumulate in the fish. I've treated for a bacterial infection though so I'm not sure this is the cause. But if it's the gas in the water why is Lester ok?She's still eating ok but I have to hand feed her. She's lying on her side at the top of the tank still breathing quite heavily. Lester comes to see her now and then to see how she is. I can't bear the thought of her going the same way as Iggy. Has anyone got any bright ideas? I've searched the net - it tells you what GBD is and what causes it but not much help on how to get rid of it. I'm just doing what frederick_more suggested last time which is to cool the water and increase aeration to try and balance her gases and the gas in the water. |