Very Sick Sydontis - flesh gone! Please Help

[hisplaceresort]

Hello!
As I have African cichlids with my catfish, I frequent cichlid-forum.com
A user on that forum added a Sydontis to his Cichlid tank recently, and didn't see him for awhile, and then posted photos of an obviously very sick catfish.
I recommended he post photos on this forum, but to save time I am just linking to that post; I hope that's OK with the moderators here...
The poor catfish looks like his flesh has been burned off or something...
Anyway, I hope this guy will open an account on this forum and post on his own, but if not I hope I am saving him some time, because this fish doesn't have much of it... I also think he might be receiving "cichlid-advice" and not "catfish-advice"..
Thanks for any help you can provide.
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/phpBB/view ... 3&t=335770

[Birger]

Wow...that looks awful...get the fish into a tank away from these cichlids...and then look up in the forum search at the top of this page... lateral line erosion...this is most likely a major case of that...Synodontis eupterus are prone to this but this looks like stress and possibly water conditions has really exacerbated this. It also may be hiding behind a heater at times but it is now more then that.

Synos in general are very resilient so it is possible it will come back.

Birger

[hisplaceresort]

Wow, thanks Birger!

I did do the search for lateral line erosion... seems to be some conflicting opinions on how to treat...

However, in a nutshell, it sounds like the OP needs to:
1.) isolate
2.) treat with Metronidazole (if accompanied by Hexamita, that needs to be addressed first)
3.) add vitamins with frozen food
4.) change to a vitamin-enriched flake food
5.) remove any activated carbon
6.) put a plastic heater cover over his tank heater

Is this pretty much it? Or should he treat with salt and metro? That part is not so clear... This forum doesn't seem to have a specific treatment article, or I'm not finding it. Thanks!

[Birger]

This looks good...if it is in a tank with Rift Lake parameters this would be a problem too...neutral would be better.
I personally do not like flake and Synodontis, they tend to gobble it up too fast and can hurt themselves doing so...but a bit of vitamin enriched would be alright.

Good food, good clean water and no rough tankmates....almost any syno can come back...in this case a little something in case of infection coud most likely be needed.


Birger