Fish mouth

[rontheking9905]

Hi all,

Could anyone tell me what this is on my fishes mouth pleases?
It’s a rainbow fish and I noticed this last week.
I am thinking it’s a fungal thing but looks different to what I have seen the the past. Seems to be hanging off.

Also if anyone has any treatment recommendations that would be great.

Oh, I have had the fish about 6 months. My aquarium has been running for two years.

 

[Andy Sager]

It looks to me like an injury more than an infection. Possibly from a fight with another fish or a scrape from a decoration in the tank. I would just keep an eye on it and if it turns red, that's a sign of a bacterial infection and if it turns fuzzy, that's a sign of fungus. If it's Fungus, I would use Fritz brand Expel-F for fungus. If it's bacterial, I'd need to know your water parameters ( Ph, Gh & Kh mostly) to recommend the proper antibiotic.
The key to healing an injury is clean water so make sure you are doing consistent water changes, you keep the Nitrate level as low as possible with ammonia & Nitrite at 0. If you see the other fish picking at this one or this fish stops eating, you would need to isolate him in a separate tank then medicate.

 

[rontheking9905]

Hi thanks, great information. I’ll keep an eye on it ��.
Good point, it could be an injury. I had a fish a few weeks back that looked like a chunk had been ripped out of him, at the time I thought he had done it on a rock.
Might do a check for sharp edges.
I just did my water tests and got the below results.
I have just started dosing Phosphates as my plants were showing signs of deficiency.
They must be using it up pretty fast !!
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0
PH 6.5
KH 4 (71.2ppm)
GH 12 (213.6ppm)
Phosphate 0

 

[Andy Sager]

Hi thanks, great information. I’ll keep an eye on it ��.
Good point, it could be an injury. I had a fish a few weeks back that looked like a chunk had been ripped out of him, at the time I thought he had done it on a rock.
Might do a check for sharp edges.
I just did my water tests and got the below results.
I have just started dosing Phosphates as my plants were showing signs of deficiency.
They must be using it up pretty fast !!
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0
PH 6.5
KH 4 (71.2ppm)
GH 12 (213.6ppm)
Phosphate 0

I haven't kept many rainbowfish varieties in the past but I do know that the males can be aggressive towards other males when wanting to spawn so you really need to watch for aggressive behavior as well as sharp edges. You want to try and keep more females than males or reduce the males to one per tank.

 

[Colin_T]

Looks like a fat lip from swimming into something. Rainbowfish has soft mouths and regularly damage them when first added to a new tank or if you move things around. They normally heal up without any help from us.

If you want to reduce the risk of infection, do a big water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week, and clean the filter. That removes most of the harmful pathogens from the tank and lets the fish's immune system do its job.