Panda Cory with growth on belly.

[aimeliabodelia]

Hello. One of my Cory Pandas that I have had for a year has developed a weird yellow growth on its abdomen and is looking very sick. I have quarantined it and don’t think it will make it, but I want to find out what happened to it in case my other fish are at risk. Does anyone know what causes this? It almost looks like its swim bladder has popped out of its body. Poor little one. My son is quite distressed about it.

Other than adding a new tetra a few weeks ago and lowering the temperature a couple of degrees to 78 my tank conditions haven’t changed. I checked my water quality today: nitrite O ppm, nitrate 5.0 ppm, ammonia 0 ppm, pH 7.2.

 

[Autumnsky]

It is possible it was impacted with eggs / egg bound.

What are your water parameters? Often there is a problem with water quality. if you recently did a water change then maybe that will be helpful for the other Cories. If the levels are not safe, then please continue to do water changes daily.

You need to do some water changes to make sure the water quality is excellent and not simply pretty good. This will help all the fish immune systems focus more on healing and less on dealing with any water quality problems. This could help any other fish you have in general.

Wat are the water parameters before and after getting the water changing done?

Ammonia
NitrIte
NitrAte

~~~~~
pH

TDS

Alkalinity

Hardness

Use temperature matched water and the amount of dechlorinator for the Cloramines level of additive. Which is usually 2x a normal dose. If your product treats Chloramines, and it is summer where you are - often water suppliers add the stronger chemical to last longer in the water.

Any time there is a death, it is time for a tank water refresh.

 

[aimeliabodelia]

Water quality

Thank you for your helpful reply. I did a 25% water change yesterday and a 75% water change today in addition to a thorough vacuuming of the sand substrate, cleaning the black algae off the plants and swishing out the filters in tank water that was removed.

The only water quality parameter that wasn’t O ppm yesterday was nitrate, which was 5-10 ppm. The pH is 7.2-7.4 and temperature is maintained at 78 degrees. I don’t have a test kit for water hardness or alkalinity but I suspect it may be on the higher end given that I used washed play sand as a substrate.

Thanks for the tip regarding conditioning the tap water. I used extra today Nutrafin Aqua+ today to account for what may be higher chlorine levels in my city tap water in the summer. I also added Nutrafin Cycle, which I do every second water change.

Since I have black algae growing on the leaves of some of my plants, I might reduce the amount of time I keep the light on, especially since the tank also gets indirect filtered sunlight from a window during the day.