Swim bladder disability? Otherwise healthy ryukin can't swim anymore

[Seamusson]

I have a euthanasia question.

I have a gold & white ryukin I call Orange Creamsicle who's a little over two years old, about the body size of a peach, who I'm afraid has a permanent disability with his swim bladder.

I've two ryukins, and Orange Creamsicle has much smaller pectoral & pelvic fins than his calico companion... so, he's always been a little tipsy on deep dives. However, several weeks ago, he seemed to be getting even more tipsy when he'd dive, and within about a day, he was just resting upside down at the bottom of the tank.

I immediately did a deep water change (something like 80%) and the next day isolated him to the food grade bucket I use for aquarium maintenance along with aeration and started three pure magnesium sulphate (epson salt) treatments per day at a concentration of 1 tbl/gal in about 3 gallons. I saw no signs of disease or infection at all, so I suspected constipation as opposed infection.

I fasted him for 3 days and then began feeding 4 parboiled shelled peas every other day. He didn't eat any the first time, but then did eat them in subsequent feedings. I continued this for 14 days, during which I never saw a bowl movement. I went through 4 lbs of magnesium sulphate with no result.

I was concerned about him being lonely and unstimulated during all of that time, so between baths I'd add his companion to the hospital bucket daily after the first several days.

After having no success with that treatment, I decided to add him back to the tank after another deep water change to see what happens. Within a couple of days I thought I saw artery stripes on his tail fins, which I've seen before with others as an indication of infection, so another deep water change and I started treating with Malafix (only antibacterial available locally) at the prescribed dosage for 7 days.

During this time I fed a frozen mix of spirulina, veggies, brine shrimp and bloodworms. I added the peas again every 3rd day.

Within 48 hrs of treatment, symptoms of possible infection vanished, and Orange Creamsicle shows no sign of any disease that I can see. He seems perfectly healthy, but disabled.

After introducing him back to the tank for a few days and through to today, I did observe some thin bowel movements. I was afraid that after 2 weeks of no bowel movements, suspecting constipation as the initial cause, and after having fed peas which weren't turning out to act as the goldfish laxative I'd hoped for, that a bacterial invention might develop, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

I'd add that several months ago, we had a very strong earthquake which tsunamied him right out of the tank onto the floor and he swam upside down for about 3 days after that but then started to swim normal again until these past few weeks. I'd also add that in the past few days, rather than being stuck upside down, now he's mostly laying on his side like a flounder.

I don't see any sign of disease. I am able to keep him fed with the frozen food mix I described, but he seems to be losing weight. His companion does hang out with him at the bottom a lot, so he's got moral support, but here's my concern:

He is clearly distressed. He really wants to swim, and if he really musters up, he can scoot along for a bit, but then as soon as he pauses, he starts losing buoyancy and just ends up laying on his side panting.

Birds who can't fly don't seem so distressed. Dogs & people can get along with prosthetics just fine, it seems. But I'm struggling with whether a fish who can't swim, and who just keeps trying to so hard, to the point of exhaustion all day, every day, is just disabled or is just really distressed & miserable.

I will also say that several times a day I will gently scoop him up and help him swim a bit for a moment and help him land on some leaves where he can stay upright for a bit. Might be my imagination, but he seems less stressed for a while when he can stay upright.

I welcome advice on what's the most compassionate way to proceed.

 

[Andy Sager]

Unfortunately, because the fish had that fall, it sounds like there may have been an internal injury that got infected and may be the cause of the distress and possibly an obstruction along the digestive tract causing the constipation. The diet you described should be a goldfish's steady diet as they need a more vegetable based diet than a protein based one. That the fish has started to defecate again is a good sign which makes suggesting euthanasia really a questionable course of action. The blood streaks in the tail (septecemia) is another sign of internal infection which you said has resolved.
So at this point, it sounds like the fish is on the mend and I would consider just letting things play out as long as you are seeing defecation. If you continue with the veggie based diet and the defecating stops, the fish should be treated with an antibiotic that gets absorbed through the skin or gills along with a repeat treatment of epsom salt. If you have a water Ph of over 7.2, I would treat with Kanamycin ( kanaplex) while if your Ph is below 7.0 and your GH is low, Maracyn 2 ( minocycline) is the better choice as both these meds are absorbed through the skin. Both of these medications are also best used in a bare hospital tank as they can effect the biological filter. Following the directions for water changes and feeding should prevent any issues being in a tank with no biological filter.
Not all injuries can heal overnight and might take months to resolve but as long as the fish is eating, there is hope for a full recovery.
Hope this helps

 

[Seamusson]

Thanks for the quick and detailed response @Andy Sager

I also feel I should give him more time. The earth quake was 9 months ago, so it's hard to say if there's a connection there. I was getting increasingly concerned about how distressed he gets sometimes and just don't want him to live miserably.

The diet I described is part of their steady diet, but typically I also include Bug Bites pellets for goldfish, spirulina pellets, and New Life Spectrum pellets. I've been keeping those away from him mostly worried that they wouldn't be helping any issues with constipation. Do you think it would be good to rotate those back into his diet? I'm now starting to worry that he might be losing weight.

Meanwhile, I'll have to order the antibiotics online. Thanks for recommendation there!

 

[Colin_T]

Can you post some clear pictures and a video of the fish?
Videos can be uploaded to YouTube, then copy & paste the link here.
If you use a mobile phone to film the fish, hold the phone horizontally (landscape mode) so the footage fills the entire screen and doesn't have black bars on each end.

---------------

Short bodied fish like fantails have their internal organs squished up. This includes their digestive tract and fantail goldfish have lots of internal issues. Dry food is a common cause for fantail goldfish and other fishes floating around after they have eaten. The fish take in air when eating from the surface and the air travels through the digestive tract before being farted out. When the fish has air in the intestine, they can float about the aquarium.

The best way to prevent this is to avoid buying short bodied fish to begin with. Besides that feeding less dry food and using more frozen/ live foods will reduce the chance of the fish floating due to air in the intestine.

 

[Autumnsky]

Also Brine shrimp can help get things moving, along with the diet, you mention, maybe not too much protein, but veggie matter based foods. Hoping the meds work wonders.

 

[Autumnsky]

And here is the info for euthanasia if you haven't seen it yet. It is good to know what options there are in advance of needing them.
https://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f17/an-overview-of-euthanasia-73775.html

 

[Andy Sager]

Thanks for the quick and detailed response @Andy Sager

I also feel I should give him more time. The earth quake was 9 months ago, so it's hard to say if there's a connection there. I was getting increasingly concerned about how distressed he gets sometimes and just don't want him to live miserably.

The diet I described is part of their steady diet, but typically I also include Bug Bites pellets for goldfish, spirulina pellets, and New Life Spectrum pellets. I've been keeping those away from him mostly worried that they wouldn't be helping any issues with constipation. Do you think it would be good to rotate those back into his diet? I'm now starting to worry that he might be losing weight.

Meanwhile, I'll have to order the antibiotics online. Thanks for recommendation there!

There seems to be a lot of questions concerning pelleted foods and constipation or gas issues. A common denominator in may posts on many groups I've seen with Goldfish and swim bladder issues or floating or constipation is pelleted foods as the main part of the diet. This seems much more prevalent than when flake foods were the only option for Goldfish. For now, I would not be feeding any pelleted foods and if the fish is in fact losing weight, I would increase the number of times per day you feed the fish. You can also add liquid vitamins in the tank or soak the foods in them before feeding to help make sure the fish is getting the vitamins to help him heal. I would make sure at least one meal per day be frozen brine shrimp ( preferably gut loaded brine shrimp) to help keep the poo flowing. The argument that Brine Shrimp has little nutritional value is accurate but you are not feeding it for the nutrition, you are feeding it for the chiton in the exoskeleton the brine shrimp has which is beneficial for keeping poo flow flowing. The gut loaded brine shrimp will actually help add more vegetable matter which is good for the goldfish.

As for the fish being miserable, it's hard to say. The goldfish with "odd" body shapes or large bellies( i.e. Orandas, Ryunkins, Fantails, etc) all show awkward swimming traits so it's hard to say the fish is miserable or mentally effected when it may be an inherited struggle to swim in the first place. I use the theory that if a fish is willing to eat, it's not emotionally effected or strained. Sick or struggling fish tend to not want to eat.
As for the time frame, you don't know the extent of any injury the fish sustained from the fall so it's also hard to say how long it will take to recover. You can equate it to someone with a broken leg. They are going to struggle to get around or walk but would you not give them the time, however long that is, to heal?

As for the medications, make sure you know the water parameters so you don't waste money on the wrong medicine. Medications are effected by Ph, calcium, and and other minerals so you want to choose meds that will work best under your conditions.

Hope this helps.

 

[Seamusson]

There seems to be a lot of questions concerning pelleted foods and constipation or gas issues. A common denominator in may posts on many groups I've seen with Goldfish and swim bladder issues or floating or constipation is pelleted foods as the main part of the diet. This seems much more prevalent than when flake foods were the only option for Goldfish. For now, I would not be feeding any pelleted foods and if the fish is in fact losing weight, I would increase the number of times per day you feed the fish. You can also add liquid vitamins in the tank or soak the foods in them before feeding to help make sure the fish is getting the vitamins to help him heal. I would make sure at least one meal per day be frozen brine shrimp ( preferably gut loaded brine shrimp) to help keep the poo flowing. The argument that Brine Shrimp has little nutritional value is accurate but you are not feeding it for the nutrition, you are feeding it for the chiton in the exoskeleton the brine shrimp has which is beneficial for keeping poo flow flowing. The gut loaded brine shrimp will actually help add more vegetable matter which is good for the goldfish.

As for the fish being miserable, it's hard to say. The goldfish with "odd" body shapes or large bellies( i.e. Orandas, Ryunkins, Fantails, etc) all show awkward swimming traits so it's hard to say the fish is miserable or mentally effected when it may be an inherited struggle to swim in the first place. I use the theory that if a fish is willing to eat, it's not emotionally effected or strained. Sick or struggling fish tend to not want to eat.
As for the time frame, you don't know the extent of any injury the fish sustained from the fall so it's also hard to say how long it will take to recover. You can equate it to someone with a broken leg. They are going to struggle to get around or walk but would you not give them the time, however long that is, to heal?

As for the medications, make sure you know the water parameters so you don't waste money on the wrong medicine. Medications are effected by Ph, calcium, and and other minerals so you want to choose meds that will work best under your conditions.

Hope this helps.

Thanks again, Andy.

Just to clarify, this is not the almost endearing "awkward swimming traits" common to fancy goldies. I did mention in my OP that this one has always been a little tipsy on deep dives, but he cold control where he wants to be in the water column, and while maybe he'd do a somersault on occassion, he'd never get stuck laying on the substrate upside down. Thinking back to the earthquake incident 9 months ago, I recall that even while he swam upside down for a few days, he was still able to move vertically in the water column. So his condition over the past several weeks is very different.

Also, for the first two weeks, I fasted him for 3 days and then began feeding 4 parboiled shelled peas every other day; then in the week or so since them, only a frozen mix of spirulina, veggies, brine shrimp and bloodworms along with peas. Given that's it's been almost a month since he's had any kind of pellets, I'm skeptical to suspect any of that as a cause.

I had an exchange with an aquatic vet who pointed out that according to the Aquatic Veterinary Association, fresh water fish can't even get constipated. However, there could be other reasons, though she considers a bacterial infection very unlikely. At this point I'm thinking that the most likely cause is congenital.

She recommended euthanasia as "the problem with a fish that’s lying on the bottom is that there’s no way to avoid it getting skin problems, akin to pressure or bed sores in humans, so even if he’s not that bad today, he soon will be and antibiotics can’t help a buoyancy problem unless it’s reasonable to think there’s a bacterial infection causing the trouble, which is very unlikely."

However, you make an excellent point: "I use the theory that if a fish is willing to eat, it's not emotionally effected or strained. Sick or struggling fish tend to not want to eat."

What's more, if he is indeed loosing some weight, the reason isn't that I'm not feeding enough, but rather he's not getting to enough of it. I mentioned his companion ryukin, but there are also two dojo loaches, so it's hard for him to compete with them even as I draw them to one side of the tank while feeding him in the front corner of the other side. I'm afraid that I'm actually over feeding the tank as a whole.

So, what I've decided to do is to mitigate against that and the issue of his skin rubbing against the substrate by feeding him in a 1/2 gallon mason jar we have with cheese cloth to cap it off and keep the dojos out. Then I can lay they jar on its side and see how that goes. He ate 3 out of 4 peas I put in with him like this a few hours ago.

Meanwhile, I don't see any harm in treating with an antibiotic. The Ph is <6.5, but the GH is high. Would you still recommend Maracyn 2 (minocycline)?

Finally, while @Colin_T didn't seem to understand my OP (the fish is not floating), they asked for a vid, so here is a short vid and a couple pics:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/A2FFMm9kNobufLVx6
https://photos.app.goo.gl/GafzzkViXCc58g6T9

I've noticed his calico companion hanging out with him in there too now:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/UBCtWFyonsBtd7U97

PS: I'm going to re-home the dojos this next week.

 

[Seamusson]

I think I figured out how to get the images up, but not the MP4 @Colin_T

 

[Andy Sager]

I'd argue the " don't get constipated" but maybe we have a different opinion on what constipated is.

As for the Marycin2, no, I wouldn't use it as calcium absorbs the med so it won't help your fish much. At this point, if you can get the fish to eat and defecate, I'd hold off on the antibiotic OR get a medicated food for bacterial diseases so that the med is absorbed internally opposed to from externally. You DO NOT want to just arbitrarily treat the fish with an antibiotic. If you read my post (@#2), I suggested that you medicate only IF the fish stopped defecating while continuing to eat. I would suggest putting the effected fish in a separate tank by itself so that it can eat without having to be harassed by other fish or in competition for the food. If he's a slow eater, allowing the food to sit in the tank for a little extra time should not be an issue as long as you remove any extra food after say, 1 hour and the water quality stays high.

 

[Fishfur]

Concerning the comment about what constitutes constipation in fish - in freshwater fish there is a constant osmotic intake of water, so much so that they have no need to ever drink water and their primary problem is getting rid of the excess, so they pee like racehorses even though they never drink.

Because of this fact, they cannot suffer from constipation in the way that humans or other mammals can. Their feces can never become dry enough to get too firm or hard or compacted and they also have that mucous coating on their feces which helps it all move along. This has been stated publicly by some aquatic vets, including a former president of their veterinary asssocation and it’s easy enough to check on it if you think it’s questionable.

Freshwater fish absolutely can suffer from blockages caused by something such as a tumour or the ingestion of some foreign body or something like intussusception but they don’t suffer from hardened or compacted fecal material that just won’t move along in the way that mammals can.

So feeding them food that’s high in fibre or daphnia for a ‘laxative effect’ isn’t going to do anything for a non existent condition and if there’s a tumour or foreign body blocking the digestive tract, probably not for those problems either.

It’s been accepted for so long on the net thanks to endless repetition, that fish keepers just assume it has to be a real problem that fish get, but we find out every day that various things that have long been accepted as fact are not true and this is one of those things.

 

[Andy Sager]

Concerning the comment about what constitutes constipation in fish - in freshwater fish there is a constant osmotic intake of water, so much so that they have no need to ever drink water and their primary problem is getting rid of the excess, so they pee like racehorses even though they never drink.

Because of this fact, they cannot suffer from constipation in the way that humans or other mammals can. Their feces can never become dry enough to get too firm or hard or compacted and they also have that mucous coating on their feces which helps it all move along. This has been stated publicly by some aquatic vets, including a former president of their veterinary asssocation and it’s easy enough to check on it if you think it’s questionable.

Freshwater fish absolutely can suffer from blockages caused by something such as a tumour or the ingestion of some foreign body or something like intussusception but they don’t suffer from hardened or compacted fecal material that just won’t move along in the way that mammals can.

So feeding them food that’s high in fibre or daphnia for a ‘laxative effect’ isn’t going to do anything for a non existent condition and if there’s a tumour or foreign body blocking the digestive tract, probably not for those problems either.

It’s been accepted for so long on the net thanks to endless repetition, that fish keepers just assume it has to be a real problem that fish get, but we finyd out every day that various things that have long been accepted as fact are not true and this is one of those things.

As I said, I'm not going to argue the definition of constipation as to me, anything that causes a blockage containing food in the intestines is " constipation". I've done autopsies on fish that were not defecating and subsequently died and I have found "pellets" of foods large enough to not pass through the intestines while there were no visual signs of tumors or twists that would have cause it. The use of foods with chiton has long been used and was recommended to me back in the 60s by my Mentor who was a certified Ichthyologist and commercial fish breeder. I've continued that ideology in my commercial hatcheries as well and very rarely had any "constipation" issues.
I'll agree that feeding these foods will not help if there is a tumor or some injury compressing the intestine to the point that the fish can not defecate but unless we can look inside the fish to see if this is the case, I would use an easily digestible food to rule that out. You rule out blockage causing scars, tumors and the like if the fish starts defecating again ( which was what happened. ) Wouldn't you agree?