Thank you for the pics! Your girls are very pretty!!
Thank you so much!
Although, all this time we thought "Sunshine" (the Red Cap with the spots) was the "girl" and "Oscar" (the Chocolate Fantail) was the "guy"...
Ok, I can't see any signs of ich or parasites. I can see bit of white edges on the chocolates fins. Mind you, I am looking at pics on my cell & pics are not quite the same as seeing something person.
The white edges may be fin rot starting to develop which is a bacterial infection.
Yes; there doesn't seem to be any Ich particles on him/her or spots anywhere else...it's on the tips, which I feared was fin rot or a spread of bacterial infection...
The wound does look quite nasty from what I can see. I can't tell if there's specifically fungus growing or not or if it's just infected. As I said earlier, fungus typically will look like tufts of white hair/strings growing.
I know it's difficult to make out -- we had the HARDEST time trying to snap a pic while Oscar was in motion; these were the best we got...the area is inflamed back there and is now almost all white.
So, this leaves us with deciding to treat for just a bacterial infection or combo of bacterial & fungus. There's a few ways to address this depending on what you have access to.
Kanamycin is an excellent antibiotic but it will likely have to be ordered online (go to National fish Pharmaceuticals site). It's a good med to have on hand. You can treat the tank & swab the sore with methylene blue. This would be my first choice.
I don't think he has that much time left, honest jlk; I need to buy something we can pick up at the store, now...plus, I am still not comfortable "swabbing" this fish out of the water with the methylene blue...
The maracyn/maracyn 2 combo OR maracyn plus will address most general infections. You will still need to swab the wound with meth blue (which will address fungus).
They had both of these at my local Petsmart; which ones do I buy -- both? Both Maracyn AND Maracyn II if there is no Maracyn Plus? Are BOTH added to the tank? And these are TABLETS that are dropped in, yes?
What about the API EM ERYTHROMYCIN?
Lastly, you can try the Jungle fungus meds which contains two milder antibiotics with anti fungal. If you can not pick your fish up, go this route but have one of the other options on hand in the event this doesn't work. I believe this treatment may only be a 4 day treatment (I may be wrong) so expect to treat for 7-8 days. Ok, figure out how you would like to approach this & get started as soon as possible with course of treatment. I really hope for a full recovery & I wish you the best!!
Thanks for all your assistance and the kind words -- as for the Jungle meds, my local Petsmart didn't have any of it, so if I go with the other stuff, is there any possible way I can treat this WITHOUT having to pick the fish up to swab the sore?