Angelfish Tails

[sobersteve323]

Hi all.

Sorry for the short subject title, had trouble posting with a longer, more descriptive one.

I have a 3 year old angelfish that looks like some of her long thin fins are rotting away. I don't think it's necessarily fin rot because the only ones affected are two of the long hair-like ones and not the other areas.

Please see the picture at the bottom of the post...
1) This section of her tail is about 1/2" shorter than the fin below it. The 1/2" that is still there is white and kind of white and mucussy for lack of a better term (not frayed at all).

2) This section is about 1" shorter than the other fin like it. about 1/4" at the end is white and mucussy. Not frayed at all as well.

All other fins look normal.

General info about the tank:
50 gallon long; planted; been running 3 years
Ammo: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 5-10 (or less just barely a color change)
Double dosing Seachem Excel daily
Co inhabitants: panda cories, platy, harlequin rasboras, nerite snails, amano shrimp
50% weekly water change with Seachem Prime
Food: Omega one flakes and wafers for the bottom feeders. Occasionally once a month freeze dried or frozen blood worms. No diet changes for 3 years.

Random tank background info:
I diligently check each fish each night when I feed them. Last night I didn't notice anything abnormal with her fins until I went to feed tonight and saw. All appetites are normal.

Last water change was 50% on Monday. Going to do another one tomorrow just for piece of mind.

No fin nipping occurs, at least while lights are on. When there is, she's doing the nipping! (tank is in the living room near the TV so we're always looking at it's general direction).

Whatever is affecting her isn't affecting the other tank mates. No shrimp or snails look ill or have died. All of the other fish do not show the same symptoms. The panda cories even successfully spawned and at least 2 of the fry survived on their own without my intervention (pretty awesome, one is about 1/4" in size and looks exactly like a mini cory right now!).

The only thing I can think of is the double dosing of the Excel or maybe she swam through it (unlikely since I shoo the fish away when I dump it; but still possible). The reason for double dosing is to fight back the BBA that popped up after a week out of town with no Excel. I double dosed Excel about 8 months ago and successfully got rid of all the visible BBA but the week I was gone, BAM it came back. Been slowly getting rid of it for the last 2 months.

She does not appear to be acting any different. She even just laid eggs a couple of days ago (which she does every few weeks). The other fish were hovering around her while she was laying the eggs so maybe she got stressed out?

Apologies for the tons of text but I just wanted to get as much info out there as possible to help diagnose the problem! Also sorry for the terrible cell phone pic. The haziness and spots are a mix of hard water on the outside of the glass and nerite snail eggs out of focus lol.

Thanks for your help!

 

[bob mccoy]

well my guess is she got defensive of her eggs and got into a fight .although im not sure the other fish would mess with her. is there a male mate in with her. angels are verry skittish and shoot fast when spooked so maybe she just snagged it. i had one get her wisker sucked in to the intake of an hob and shee got scared and tore part off when she moved away fast. most fins will grow back in time

 

[sobersteve323]

well my guess is she got defensive of her eggs and got into a fight .although im not sure the other fish would mess with her. is there a male mate in with her. angels are verry skittish and shoot fast when spooked so maybe she just snagged it. i had one get her wisker sucked in to the intake of an hob and shee got scared and tore part off when she moved away fast. most fins will grow back in time

She's the only angel no males with her. She does tend to lay her eggs on the intake of the fluval so I guess that's a possibility. She doesn't look any different from when the picture was taken so I'm hoping its nothing serious. Still acting and eating normally. Thanks for the reply.

 

[Fishfur]

Chances are she will regrow the missing fin part with some time. Most fish can heal wounds to their fins, even quite nasty ones, with time, clean water and a bit of luck.

I've also see one Betta fish that had lost about a half inch of length on both the gill fins, and about a quarter inch on the ventral fin. He was kept on very coarse, chunky substrate what was totally unsuited to a Betta. He literally rubbed that fin tissue away.

Once I got him, a bare bottom tank with some Almond Leaves saw that half inch of gill fin regrow, though it was not the same colour as the rest of him. Pale, blueish white, but didn't look bad at all. Ventral fins also regrew a nice edge of new tissue, same pale colour. Took a couple of months for it all to grow back.

If you can get Indian Almond leaves, they would be useful to aid healing of the fin. A couple of them left on the tank bottom will soon be reduced to the skeletal veins, when they are replaced. They will tint water, like wood will. Or you can brew tea with them. Two or three leaves in a gallon of cold water, for two days or so. Then use several cups of that with each water change. Natural antibiotic properties, along with tannic and humic acids, something Angel fish like anyway.

 

[sobersteve323]

So far still doing fine. The white mucus is gone for the most part. Just two shorter fins lol. Everyone else is still fine too so I wonder what got her.