PlanetCatfish.com

Hello everyone

I haven’t posted fir a while but I’m still knee deep in catfish!

I’m posting because I need some advice on something that started happening to my female

Just now I was looking at her and I honestly though she was dead until she took off, she was lying motionless on the bottom and there appears to be an area on her right side that is a light red, missing scales and appears to have some tiny pieces of tissue hanging off her side and her eyes appear to be slightly glazed over which has me thinking something bacterial is going on.

I don’t have any of my test kits handy and won’t be able to get them until tomorrow at the earliest- for now:

Tank: 40 gallon breeder
Tenperature: 78F
Filtration: Fluval 306
Aeration: single airstone

Tankmates:
11 Red phantom tetras
5 Rosy tetras
3
2
2
1
1
And the male thats since been seperated

Decor: Javafern and two ecaulpytus root pieces with Caribsea Tahitian moon sand fir substrate (1/2 inch thick)

Water change regiment: 25%-40% weekly

Feeding: frozen bloodworm, brineshrimp, spirulina brineshrimp, mysis shrimp, Tropical fish flakes and Omega 1 shrimp pellets

Action taken if any: Nothing so far but posting here, I’m worried about this though. I’ve had these fish for about a week now and before then my friend had them happily with a bunch of large cichlids for a few months without any issues so it seems that something I’m doing has caused this.

Thanks for all help in advance!

I've spawned these at similar parameters and have first hand experience with a similar issue. I cannot say my "treatment" will work as it's very generic but I can say that this is what I did when I saw this and it worked for me. (Species only tank, you will have to factor-in my advice with the other tank mates)

1 - I shut off the lights, I believe I had them off for close to 2 weeks.
2 - I added a small medicinal dosage of salt. Depending on the species I like to use a little under 1 TABLESPOON per 5 GALLONS of water. (I started with 1/2 TABLESPOON pr 5G)
3 - My temp was between 73F/23C - 79F/26C when I encountered this. I bumped this up to 81F/27C on discovery
4 - 50% water changes daily after the single (1 TIME) salt dosage. - The WCs are undoubtedly the most beneficial action you can take
5 - The fish could be trying to spawn/or are uncomfortable and the male could be harassing the female. It might be worth looking into floating "nests/leaves/logs etc"

IF these actions don't result in improvement I would explore external parasitic medication.

AGAIN this is just my experience with this, what I did, and what worked for me

It looks like the result of some kind of harrasment. This can be done by the male, but also, unwillingly, by one of the other catfish. After all, the Megalechis are more day active, while the others sleep during the day.

On a sidenote, catfish don´t have scales. This might seem pedantic, but many medicatons have a footnote `dose half for scaleless fish`. Your fish has a bony armour, not scales.

Thanks for the responses guys!

I'm going to an lfs today so I can grab some aquarium salt and get some floating plants (I have some water lettuce I tried to bring back in there but its not stable enough for nesting.

Also Bas Pels I appreciate you saying that, I was little panicked last night but I do know that Corydoras have two rows of bony plates- not scales. I honestly don't know how I forgot that

There seems to be some consistency of this probably being the male, perhaps I should seperate them for the time being? if it is the male the tables have certainly turned- the female was always chasing him around when I first added them.

Just wanted to do a quick update

The female is still alive and doing fairly well, the redness has subsided but there now appear to be some translucent filaments hanging from the open wounds. It doesn't look like any bacterial infection I've ever seen before, the filaments are long and thicker than the hair like structures I'm use to seeing with bacterial infections, could this just be excess mucous created to protect the wounds from infection? Her eyes haven't cleared up either so I'm unsure if thats secondary from an infection or if she's just blind.

I removed the male and I added Half a teaspoon of salt for every 5 gallons on the 11th, I did 50% water changes the next two days before taking a break and doing another 50% waterchange tonight with another planned for tomorrow. Again she seems to be improving so I'll hold off on medications a little longer but I really dont want to loose these fish, I'd love to spawn them and get them circulating through some of my LFS's for others to enjoy!

I have an update and its not great...

The female seemed to recover a little after the salt treatment and water changes so I gave the tank some food and waited a day before I did another water change. In this time I noticed that she seemed to deteriorate so I did another water change last night and treaded the tank with seachems kanaplex as per the instructions (one level scoop of the included measure for every 5 gallons) and came home to check on the fish and her saw like this, compared to the first photo her condition has obviously deteriorated and I'm both stumped and worried that I'm not going to be able to bring this fish back. Has anybody seen this before and or know what to do about it? The medication seems to making the situation worse so I might just do 80% water change tomorrow and continuing doing 50% water changes daily after that to remove the medication. I'm worried she'll perish before I can carry out the recommended doses tomorrow and two days after that.

Regards
James

oops

Whatever it is, was, she has, now the wounds have becomen fungused. That is, at least she has two infections.

Salt does help good against fungus. Once I dosed a fish with fungus 3 or 4 cm long, with 1 gram a liter of salt. I litterally saw the fungus fall from the fish.

I think I would try dosing the tank today with half that dosis, and if the fungus is on the fish tomorrow, again half a gram a liter. (take a bucket of tankwater, add the salt, dissolve it and slowly pour this into the tank, preferably near the inflow from any filter).

If I remember correctly, salt did seam to hel the first time, didn't it?

Thanks for the input Bas pels, in hindsight I should have stuck with the salt but my emotions got the better of me and as will always be the case the consequence was quick to reveal its self.

Part of me knew she wouldn’t make it through the night. I’ll do several 50% water changes to remove the majority of the kanaplex and put the male back in the tank shortly after. Hopefully this thread can help someone else who has this issue in the future. I have feeling it will be a very long time before I’ll be able to find another female, this was second time in my life I saw any megalechis in my province and first time was over a decade ago.

Thanks to all who contributed.

Regards
James

Please let us know whether she made it - just as you say, for future reference