• Hello guest! Are you an Apistogramma enthusiast? If so we invite you to join our community and see what it has to offer. Our site is specifically designed for you and it's a great place for Apisto enthusiasts to meet online. Once you join you'll be able to post messages, upload pictures of your fish and tanks and have a great time with other Apisto enthusiasts. Sign up today!

Treating dropsy

Tobiwon

New Member
Messages
1
hello i have recently purchased an apistogramma viejita II from a good source but soon after i discovered he had gill flukes i didnt ring up the shop bad idea. my geos got it too but i dealt with that over the next three weeks. i then moved him to his own tank and about a week later he got it, i treated straight away with tetracycline. He isnt bloated but does have pine cone scales but only mildly and his poo isnt slimy or white any more. do i keep going with tetracycline? i have mentioned the flukes because i have read that apisto's are prone to dropsy after flukes.
 

RustedKnight

New Member
Messages
81
Location
Carmarthen, Wales
Sounds like he's had a hard time, poor little guy.

I'm afraid I've never dealt with dropsy before *touch wood* so I can't offer any assistance. I hope someone can help you soon.

Good luck.
 

tjudy

Moderator
Staff member
5 Year Member
Messages
2,822
Location
Stoughton, WI
Dropsy is hard to define because the condition of being swollen is caused by more than on disease. If you are not seeing red patches on the skin under/between the scales, I would start looking at causes other than bacteria. If you have run a full week or more on tetracycline and are not seeing any more improvement, then I doubt the the medication is doing you any good. If it were my fish I would switch over to metronidozole, preferably in food if you can get the fish to eat it. A lot of the infections we see in fish are primarily caused by protozoans, with a secondary bacterial infection. May this is what you are battling, and the antibiotics are controlling the bacteria (and that is why you see some improvement, but not total cure). Tetracycline will not affect protozoans, but metro will... very well. Plus metro is a mild antibiotic and will inhibit the bacteria while curing the protozoan.
 

Apistomaster

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
703
Location
Clarkston, WA
By the time a dwarf Cichlid is showing obvious symptoms of dropsy the battle is already lost. I think everyone has to give treating it a try but if you have done it enough you will eventually discover that treating it is a lost cause about 99% of the time.

Your best course of action is prevention.
Treat all new fish with a combination of flubendazole, metroniadazole and praziquantel(Hikari PraziPro) about 10 days. Use all three meds at the same time. I also use this treatment regime on all my wild caught plecos and Discus and it saves a lot of fish. I actually treat my Discus and plecos for about 30 days because latent hatching eggs and cysts are often missed when using a shorter duration treatment. These fish can outlive dwarf Cichlids by many times so a longer term treatment is more beneficial for them than it is for Apistogramma spp.
Maintain the highest water quality as possible and the incidence of "dropsy" will be much less than if you skip this quarantine/treatment period.
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
17,916
Messages
116,205
Members
13,028
Latest member
JaconieMalonie

Latest profile posts

Josh wrote on anewbie's profile.
Testing
EDO
Longtime fish enthusiast for over 70years......keen on Apistos now. How do I post videos?
Looking for some help with fighting electric blue rams :(
Partial updated Peruvian list have more than this. Please PM FOR ANY QUESTIONS so hard to post with all the ads poping up every 2 seconds….
Top