Gourami showing swim bladder symptoms but not quite.

Hi, it was recommended that I contact you - not sure how specialized this is but we have a tank about 500L, our gourami keeps swimming upward, he's not struggling to stay upright, not getting worse, not getting better.
Have tried feeding peas, fasting - he's been this way for about 11 days.

2x golden gouramis, 2 tin foils, 1xCAE, 1 x pleco, 1x dwarf gourmami, 2 x sun cats, 1x apple snail.
filtration is a canister filter
test strips indicate everything is normal.
did a 30% water change 4 days ago.

can you advise?
many thanks.

 

Hi uni,

It sounds as though your gourami does have a swimbladder problem. It sounds as though he has an underinflated swimbladder. This is the result of a bacterial infection and you may have had a chance to treat that if you treated him within 24 hours after he started with this problem, but it is now too late. This happens quite often in discus. You can treat it with antibiotics, but in only about 50% of cases is the treatment successful. If he gets a lot worse, and lies on the bottom and get his fins frayed, I would put him out of his misery..

The causes of this can be genetic and some inbred gouramis are prone to such problems, but rapid water temperature changes, poor water conditions from the tap and lack of water changes can also cause these problems. However, your tank is large and not heavily stocked so it is unlikely to be the last three reasons, but rather genetic. What sort of a gourami is this?

Sorry about the bad news.

Dirk

 

thank you for the quick reply.
unfortunately we were away when the symptoms first started.
i posted a picture here. he's a golden gourami.

http://www.blue-genie.co.za/fishies/DSCF4023.JPG

 

Yes, unfortunately this is often when these problems start. Golden gouramis are an inbred strain of blue and three spot gouramis so it is not entirely surprising that he has this problem, but from the pic, I think I can see that he has some internal bacterial infection, something like Aeromonas and this is quite serious. When did you add new fishes to this tank?

 

we haven't added any new fish in at least 8 months, the only new thing is the apple snail and that's about a month and a bit.

 

OK, then this is just bad luck and it may be that the fish is coming on in years.

Kind regards,

dirk

 

thank you again.
Uni

 

I apologize if I am incorrect or jumping the gun here. . .
But. . .

I do believe we have isolated the possible culprit.
(Ive read threads where apple snails are acredited with carrying diseases)

 

Yeah i'm not one for introducing anything new once we have a settled ecosystem going but my partner got a bee in his bonnet - he's been doing a lot of plant experiments in the small tank - which is planted -and he needed some algae assistance so got the snails.
is there any special care needed or treatment available to ensure that the other fish don't get infected?

 

Yes, I agree it could be the snails, but don't go overboard, now and try to treat everuthing with heavy medication that will cause the next problem. Just remove the fish and carry on as per usual. Do regular small waterchanges and it should be fine.

Shit happens as they say.