Should I try to rescue these fish?

[Numero111]

I've had dwarf gouramis with their eventual death and I'm glad to see that you have saved them from death

[dblondfemme]

Melafix is an antibiotic. I use it, pimafix, aquarium salt and heat for most things. Darkish poo won't be tapeworm...it is white, even when dead. The other med I LOVE is Binox. I have brought back close to dead fish using it and stress coat...I consider stress coat to be fish valium. One thing ot consider....each time you move them around it is increased stress....just a little info from my little world

[afremont]

I'm a big fan of salt and heat as well. I'd like using homeopathic meds, but I'm willing to try the chemical meds too. Whatever it takes. Yeah, I hate moving them around, but I had to get them from the 10g hospital to something bigger and I only had the one 20g ready. Judging by their behavior, I'd say it is still too crowded. I will move the healthiest looking fish to the other tank. That should be the end of the moving for at least a month.

As for saving them from death numero111, I fear that this species of fish is simply not the healthiest and will not live very long lives. Especially with the selectively bred (inbred) varieties like these. I've read that the fish farms feed them antibiotics their whole life, no wonder they tend to get sick so easily after being shipped. Fish that would have likely died from just being genetic runts are kept and used for reproduction if they have allot of blue or allot of red. I do like the way they look and act though, they have some personality.

[Numero111]

Yeah I've heard of the best success with the dwarf honey or you could just get a normal gourami which has a much better life expectancy

[R_sustaita]

I like gouramies, but after reading that last part, seems i wont be getting anytime soon.

[afremont]

Update. Still got eight of them, lost one more about two weeks ago. He suddenly started hiding and not eating for a couple of days. The other fish were picking on him a bit so I put him in his own hospital tank. He was breathing a little hard and wouldn't eat anything, but he swam around and generally looked healthy. Went to bed and he was swimming around at an angle like they do when getting ready to park for the night. He was stone dead the next morning with no visible symptoms of any kind. I sure wasn't expecting that based on his current symptoms.

Everybody else seems to be doing ok, especially the five "weaker" fish that live in a different tank. They've all fattened up a bit as they had gotten a tad skinny looking after I got them. All the fish act fine now, no sign of any parasites that I can see. Poop looks right and nobody hides. In fact they all come to the surface when I show up. When I open the lid and look inside the top, they squirt water at me. Too funny.

I got a microscope now and know a little about using it since I had one when I was a kid. Any more fish die and it's fish autopsy time. Any odd growths and I will be taking samples and making cultures if necessary. I'm sick of guessing what is wrong with fish when in a large number of cases you can look and see. Been watching videos on growing cultures and gram-staining. It really doesn't seem all that difficult, certainly no more so than what we already have to know and do to keep them alive.

I've already looked at some samples of the brown algae spots in one of my tanks. It's diatoms. Most looked like rolling pins, some look like diamonds. Just think I could have avoided all that worry that it was something dangerous when I was freaking out over all the brown algae that suddenly showed up in the tank.

[mnemenoi]

Glad to hear they are all doing better!!! or at least most of them, but rest assured it would have been 100% totality if you had left them there.

The chance of them carrying the Dwarf gourami Iridovirus is very high, some research suggesting that up to 22% all carry it in farm fish. It may be difficult to identify, but its sysmptoms include lethargic behaviour, darken of colour, tumours and death within a year. This virus is also believed to infect other fish like Swordtails and Mollys, possibly some cichlids. There is no treatment for this virus.

Looking forward to your findings and I will send you a big Thanks from your aquatic freinds, I know they appreciate your dilligence and efforts!!!

[R_sustaita]

Kudos to you man. and i am glad they are doing great. there is nothing more rewarding than fish squirting at you in the morning!

[afremont]

Thank you for the reply and compliments. I've been researching it some and thought allot about the irridovirus. I've seen those statistical values, at least for fish coming out of asia. It's also been several years (>5?) now since it was a big thing. I know it's not like we would have positive confirmation that it was still a problem since nobody really seems to be researching it, least ways that I can find. I've seen allot of blame placed on the disease, even though symptoms varied wildly. Some fish died within days, yet others took months to waste away. Some had bumps, others had open sores when they died. I even saw one fish diagnosed with a prognosis of certain death from DGD because of the capsule shaped bump in the rear part of the body that I think is the rear section of their swim bladder. I've seen it come and go with different fish that were all fine, and there are stock photos all over the net showing the bump. It's always exactly the same proportion and location based upon the size of the DG. I'm starting to think that DGD has become a catch-all for every otherwise unexplained death that self-perpetuates due to the internet time-lock. I'm speaking of the effect the internet has on information since most people don't look much at the dates of the information. This seems to keep rumors, wives-tales, and statistics like we've seen going forever regardless of the progression of time. Too bad there is no internet freshness date on information, most news articles seem to intentionally leave dates out. I've seen others say it, and I tend to agree that if 22% of the fish were really infected shouldn't the entire world population have been at risk? As far as I know, there are still plenty of fish in the wild and the "virus" was present right there in asia and has been transported all over the world. You'd think that there would have been no way to avoid releasing it into the wild even if only by water changes. I also have to ask why breeders would continue to put their entire fish stock at risk by continuing to breed them. I feel the same about LFS locations and even chain stores with them keeping them in the same water systems as many other species of more expensive fish. Just sayin' :-) I'm almost starting to form the opinion that they may die from a myriad of causes and it's all because they are easily frightened, sickly, inbred fish with no genetic diversity that succumb to the first thing that attacks them when stressed. But they are beautiful and have great personality.

All that aside, I have on intention of mixing these fish with my main fish at this time. I'm not sure I would feel right about giving them away even with full disclosure as I'm still not sure exactly what was killing them. It seems to primarily have been some kind of parasite that was apparently attacking the gills and also internally, but I have absolutely no proof of that. I treated them with all kinds of meds (no melafix) and the parasite treatments seemed to have the most positive effects plus the poop seemed to agree. :-) They all did better after a few days in methylene blue, but that could have had several positive effects. It's good for some external parasites, kills the heck out of most bacteria and helps with oxygen transfer to the blood while repairing damaged hemoglobin (methemoglobin) caused by nitrIte poisoning. I do know this, if another one mysteriously dies I will dissect it into individual cells if need be to determine what killed it.

[afremont]

Kudos to you man. and i am glad they are doing great. there is nothing more rewarding than fish squirting at you in the morning!

Thanks, but the fish deserve all the credit for pulling thru even though I way over medicated them. Yeah, the squirting is cool, they just started doing it a couple of weeks ago. One jumps at my hand and rubs against it some times. Can't hardly vacuum the tank without them swarming around my hand chomping at the detritus, yuck.

So, you still have that cichlid in there? How's that going?

[R_sustaita]

yeah i still got the peacock, she and the tetra have develop a bind. i think is a bond as they play tag. i have them now on the 29g with other 12 cichlids Yellow labs to be exact. now with 3 tanks a woman screaming to take one to my office.