Help! Fish nearly dead, and I want to try to save him

[Krisvalkyrie]

I found my favorite fish - an apisto cacuotoides (sp?) tripple red. He was laying looking dead. I went to get him with a net and he started swimming some.

His scales are all puffed out, and he is sinking sometimes nose down, tail up. I put him in a separate tank with fresh water, dechlorinator and some epsom salts (he has a tendency to eat more shrimp than he can easily digest and has had some problems that way.

I have a few different kinds of medicine - some blue stuff Dan from HAW used to mix up, some tetracycline and some parasite stuff, but I don't know which, if any to use.

Please feel free to text me, 210-788-3792 as it is urgent. Thanks in advance for your help!

Now for some other information - I added some threadfin rainbows to the tank about 1-2 months ago. All went well until I cleaned out my filter (it was WAY overdue and the filter was sluggish) after that water change the water got cloudy (I figured bacteria coming back up to par) and I lost half of my threadfins to some kind of illness that made their scales cloudy. I tried another water change, and things seemed to get better, the rest of the fish are healthy and my rice fish are breeding again. However, this does not appear to be what is wrong with my apisto.

[eklikewhoa]

Scales puffed out? Dropsy?

Rarely hear success stories for this one.

[Krisvalkyrie]

epsom salt and darkness, right? Anything else?

[eklikewhoa]

I would go as far as doing a clout bath/dip

[Krisvalkyrie]

anyone know where I can find clout in San Antonio? Would petsmart have it?

[Darbex]

Yeah sounds like dropsy.

[aquabee]

Agreed. Sorry to hear. This is a tough one to cure completely. :( I don't believe I've ever seen Clout at Petsmart... Usually only LFS's carry it. Keep doing salt and darkness as you try to find Clout. Best of luck.

[supadave]

I've had this with a couple of Trophs over the past three years are so . There is a 50/50 chance of being able to cure this condition . I was successful in doing it with a combination of Clout...Epsom salt...and water changes. You may want to give Dave at Dave's Rare Fish in San Antonio a call . He's a cool guy and will probably be able to help you .

[troy tucker]

This is why the man is Supa. Sorry about the fish. Good Luck...

[LooksLater]

Sorry to hear. Hope everything works out.

[Krisvalkyrie]

Sigh, unfortunately, he was too far gone. Will have to try to find another apisto somewhere here in town. Thanks for the help, I wish I found him sooner. Since he and the female were hiding, I was hoping they were breeding. Apparantly not - just in case though, I darkened my main tank and added salt, and upon checking this morning the rest of my fish were looking better. Going to hold off feeding them for a day or so.

[rage]

Fliter

... All went well until I cleaned out my filter (it was WAY overdue and the filter was sluggish) after that water change the water got cloudy (I figured bacteria coming back up to par) and I lost half of my threadfins to some kind of illness that made their scales cloudy. I tried another water change, and things seemed to get better, the rest of the fish are healthy and my rice fish are breeding again. However, this does not appear to be what is wrong with my apisto.

When you cleaned out the filter, did you use tank's water or water from tap? Did you clean all filters' pads at once?
Tap water can kill all the bacteris that live on the filter's pad so your system may have lost it's biology filtration then.

[afremont]

Sorry I missed this post yesterday. A bacterial bloom after a filter clean is not really a good sign of what's going on with the water. Have you measured your ammonia and especially your nitrItes? Ammonia spikes can recover really fast, but nitrItes can go on and on and on etc...

EDIT: Oops, sorry to hear about the loss