Search the Community

This is our 8-year-old goldfish, Bruce. These ulcers appeared on her mouth this morning and her poop has been thin and stringy. Is this hole in the head? What can we do for her? She is in an unheated 75 gallon tank with regular water changes using our well water. All water parameters are good and nothing has been changed in months, since the addition of some jungle val. She shares her tank with 1 apple snail and 20 white cloud mountain minnows.

Hey all, I have a colony of Chapalichthys pardalis (the Leopard Goodeid) and I've had them in their tank for about 8 months now. All was fine and they were even breeding, so I was quite pleased. (Great little fish btw.) I had one fish a week ago present with something that looked like hole-in-the-head. I thought that was mainly a cichlid disease, so I suspected also that it could have been trauma from aggression from tankmates (they chase around a lot but I've never seen them actually fight.) The spot had gotten quite a bit worse over about 3 days (it spread and showed obvious deformity to the head, but wasn't exactly deep.) I isolated it and added aquarium salt and erythromycin... it went from very active and behaving normally to dead within minutes of putting him in that isolation tank. 😕 I had even animated him to the temp, used dechlorinator, and half of it was water from his old tank. So not sure what was going on there. Here is the fish that died: I thought it was perhaps a fluke- an older adult with a weakened immune system- but now I can see the beginnings of the same spot on two other adults in the colony. This suggests to me that I should treat the entire tank, but with what? Does anyone have experience using aquarium salt with goodeids? It ought to be ok. I have had bad luck in the past adding erythromycin to QT tanks. This is the second time that I've had a fish die within minutes of exposure. (I know we talk about the fallacy of treating a sick fish with a med, and yet sick fish dies anyway, but it is not normal for this to happen so quickly.) Behavior has been 100% normal. 20gal tank with what is now 4 adults and about 8 large fry. Planted tank witha sponge filter as well as a Fluval U1 underwater filter. Params: 70.2*F, pH 8.0 (normal for my hard water), nitrate a bit high at 50ppm (got a little overenthusiastic with the Easy Green,- I'll do a water change), nitrite 0 ppm, hardness GH 300+, buffer KH 300+, Chlorine 0ppm. All of this is pretty normal. I have been struggling with excess mulm in the tank lately but unsure if that would cause an issue. I do weekly water changes from 30-50%, using Prime to dechlorinate. No ides what has caused this. I contacted the breeder I purchased them from and he said he had never seen it in his colony and recommended metronidazole if it is hole-in-the-head, which like I said, I'm not sure. But it certainly seems like something infectious. Please help! This is an endangered goodied species and I will feel very bad if I lose them. (Well, I'd feel bad regardless.) Please be clear in your answer if you have experience treating goodieds or if you've just mined info from the internet. I am trying to figure out if they are particularly sensitive to meds or something. Thank you! Current fish: pardon this blurry pic, of course they won't cooperate 🙄