I'm gonna get straight the point here. I lost my paradise fish to what I'm almost certain was dropsy, and it was completely my fault. Admittedly I've been delaying sharing this for a few days, mainly because I feel horrible about the whole thing.
Now to explain exactly what happened. This will probably be a very lengthy post so apologies in advance. Prior to getting the paradise fish I had loads of bladder snails in the 29. And I loved them! They were just an extremely helpful, and completely unintentional addition to the tank. I never mentioned this in the other thread but within a matter of weeks the paradise fish actually completely decimated the bladder snail population in the tank. To the point where I couldn't spot a single snail. Over time algae was slowly taking over the tank. Everything was still doing fine for the most part, apart from the pennywort which was starting to struggle. Two weeks ago exactly I had the "genius" idea to get four fairly large Nerite snails. That was on Wednesday, July 5. All was good. On Thursday I did my regular 50% w/c. I usually do a 40-50% water change every 3 days and I’m very strict on that.
Everything seemed perfectly fine until Sunday morning when I turned on the lights. The paradise fish was nowhere to be found. I searched the tank for a few minutes, checked the floor. Eventually I found him resting on the magnetic glass cleaner in the top left corner of the tank, almost completely unresponsive. I immediately tested the water to see ammonia somewhere around 0.5ppm. I did an 80% water change as fast as I could. He seemed alright after this, but was still quite stressed.
This is where I feel the most guilty. I think it’s safe to assume that the extra bio load from the snails completely threw off the cycle. And if this is the case, I should’ve known better. This tank only had a two inch paradise fish in it for two months. I should have known that by adding 4 snails (ones that weren’t much smaller than fish itself) into a tank with tons of algae to feed on, that they would increase the bio load quite a bit. I should have upped my water change frequency. At the time I completely overlooked this, although now it seems obvious in retrospect.
Monday I did another 80% w/c first thing that day. He was starting to act a bit more normal, and was also willing to eat so I had hope. On Tuesday though that hope was quickly lost, this is when I noticed the start of the abdomen swelling and pineconing of the scales. As well as white stringy poop. Over the course of the next few days I tried multiple epsom salt baths, Kanaplex, even some medicated metro flakes while he still had an appetite. Not sure if the metro was helpful at all but I did it anyway. I was also continuing to do daily 80% water changes this entire time. His condition just kept rapidly declining however as the days went by. He was extremely swollen and pineconed. He was slowly losing the ability the swim properly. He would stay motionless at the surface all day, only taking an occasional gulp of air. I felt horrible for the poor fish and did not want to continue drawing out his inevitable death. So this past Saturday after I got home from work I decided to euthanize in a small 1g bucket using clove oil.
This really got to me. Yes, it is just a fish at the end of the day but I still genuinely enjoy caring for these animals. It’s my responsibility to do so. So when things go wrong I feel the need to take responsibility. I can’t help but feel like I let this poor fish down. I probably won’t be getting another for a little while and will just focus on getting the 29 to its former state right now.
Now to explain exactly what happened. This will probably be a very lengthy post so apologies in advance. Prior to getting the paradise fish I had loads of bladder snails in the 29. And I loved them! They were just an extremely helpful, and completely unintentional addition to the tank. I never mentioned this in the other thread but within a matter of weeks the paradise fish actually completely decimated the bladder snail population in the tank. To the point where I couldn't spot a single snail. Over time algae was slowly taking over the tank. Everything was still doing fine for the most part, apart from the pennywort which was starting to struggle. Two weeks ago exactly I had the "genius" idea to get four fairly large Nerite snails. That was on Wednesday, July 5. All was good. On Thursday I did my regular 50% w/c. I usually do a 40-50% water change every 3 days and I’m very strict on that.
Everything seemed perfectly fine until Sunday morning when I turned on the lights. The paradise fish was nowhere to be found. I searched the tank for a few minutes, checked the floor. Eventually I found him resting on the magnetic glass cleaner in the top left corner of the tank, almost completely unresponsive. I immediately tested the water to see ammonia somewhere around 0.5ppm. I did an 80% water change as fast as I could. He seemed alright after this, but was still quite stressed.
This is where I feel the most guilty. I think it’s safe to assume that the extra bio load from the snails completely threw off the cycle. And if this is the case, I should’ve known better. This tank only had a two inch paradise fish in it for two months. I should have known that by adding 4 snails (ones that weren’t much smaller than fish itself) into a tank with tons of algae to feed on, that they would increase the bio load quite a bit. I should have upped my water change frequency. At the time I completely overlooked this, although now it seems obvious in retrospect.
Monday I did another 80% w/c first thing that day. He was starting to act a bit more normal, and was also willing to eat so I had hope. On Tuesday though that hope was quickly lost, this is when I noticed the start of the abdomen swelling and pineconing of the scales. As well as white stringy poop. Over the course of the next few days I tried multiple epsom salt baths, Kanaplex, even some medicated metro flakes while he still had an appetite. Not sure if the metro was helpful at all but I did it anyway. I was also continuing to do daily 80% water changes this entire time. His condition just kept rapidly declining however as the days went by. He was extremely swollen and pineconed. He was slowly losing the ability the swim properly. He would stay motionless at the surface all day, only taking an occasional gulp of air. I felt horrible for the poor fish and did not want to continue drawing out his inevitable death. So this past Saturday after I got home from work I decided to euthanize in a small 1g bucket using clove oil.
This really got to me. Yes, it is just a fish at the end of the day but I still genuinely enjoy caring for these animals. It’s my responsibility to do so. So when things go wrong I feel the need to take responsibility. I can’t help but feel like I let this poor fish down. I probably won’t be getting another for a little while and will just focus on getting the 29 to its former state right now.
