Hole disease on Red?

[FisherCat]

Got a problem with my 3-4 inch red snakehead. He had just a few clean,neat holes along his jaw & under the chin & so did his siblings,but they acted healthy. Now he's bigger & has more holes. But those arent't the only holes, He now has some wound-like holes on the top of his head which reminds me of hole-in-the-disease from my cichlids days. Siblings(still at lfs) don't have those. Can a snakehead get that?

Put some meds left over from my cichlids in the tank (metronidazole),but doens't seem to do anything. Should I try something else?


He was eating feeders,but I'm trying to get him to eat dried krill. Still eating really good, always hungary & moving about.

Help?

p.s. I'll try & get some pics

 

[Jakob]

It's propably HITH (Hole In The Head) but i don't know how too cure!

 

[tropheus]

reds can in deed get HITH ,you the same as your cichlids and many other fish , the causes are not fully understood and many people have diferant opinions , the only thing i have found that reverses HITH is by addition of miricle mud , it is designed for discus and marine fish mainly but can be used for any fish , see http://www.ecosystemaquarium.com/products/miracle_mud.cfm

i dont use it in a fudge like suggested but insted mix in with my sand at a rate of approx 20% mud to 80% sand , i have personally seen it reverse HITH in a emporer angle fish , and since returning to freshwater i have used it and never had one case of HITH since .

however channa are also known to suffer from a bactirial infection that looks a bit like HITH but can affect all body parts where the skin is eaten away ,

have you got any decent pics of this ?

hope you get sorted out

cheers col

 

[FisherCat]

Darn, I can't get stuff like that..I live in a small town. Sounds like great stuff though.

Do you know what heals the bacteria that effects channa? I have a med which kills diff types of bacterial infections,but I don't want to start randomly adding & mixing meds...he's only in a 10 gal hositpal tank.

 

[tropheus]

unfortunately , if it is the bacterial disease that eats the flesh away , there is nothing that seams to help it and in 99% of cases would result in mortality , you would know if it was this if any other part of the body becomes infected , it usually starts off looking like a heater burn on the skin ,then it turns red with bare flesh exposed , horrible thing and as far as i know there is no cure , this is one of the reasons Channa will be banned throughout the e.u , because they are one of the suspected carriers which the EU feel might damage captive stocks of fish , i believe there are meads on the market for hith but i believe at best you can only hope to stop it and not reverse it , all the meds i tried in the UK seamed useless until i found the miracle mud

 

[varanio]

Keep the water clean and add some salt and lastly keep the temps nice and high.

 

[FisherCat]

Keep the water clean and add some salt and lastly keep the temps nice and high.

Saw on some of the other threads that salt is bad for SH though...specially young reds it looks like, have you personally used salt for them? What kind of salt, just normal aquarium kind? I own some of that & it worked great on my other fish, just worried to add it to SH


Still can't get pics..lil guy hates camara flash & pics turn out all blurry

 

[tropheus]

fishercat , you beat me to it , i was just going to say , watch the salt if you go that route , you are correct channa have a low tolerance to salt in the water and could stress them out making them worse , also by "keeping the water clean" all channa also hate water changes so do not go changing large amounts at once.

one of the meds i have tried in the past is waterlife octozin , did not work for me , but others have reported sucsess (the secret here is to crush the tablets and mix up in feed ,the fish really have to ingest some of this for it to work)

i dont know what meds you can get over there , but if you can get hold of dimetridazole used at 5mg/ltr or (not both) metronidazole used at 7mg/ltr (over here we can only get them from a vets with perscription ) . this is of course best carried out in hospital tank unless all fish in tanks are showing signs , leave in tank 3-4 days then do 20% water change then repeat treatment , i would treat 3-4 times in total . then either return to main tank (if you treated in hospital tank ) or add carbon or preferably polyfilter to strip chems out of water (i used this method which seamed to stop the hith in its tracks but the hole was allways there ,it was never reversed)

if the fish is still eating well you can soak there food in a small amout of the treatment and when ingested seams to have a bit better efect on the recovery according to some reports (i have never used this method)

finally the most efective method if your really brave (i would suggest you get a vet to do this ) inject a small amount of the treatment directly in the head at the point of the infection ) this is a sure way of stopping it in its tracks , but again is unlikly to totally reverse the hith desise, (i know someone who took this route , i personally have not )

 

[FisherCat]

Got some blurry pics of my baby's wounds. Camara doesn't like water pics....

 

[FisherCat]

Opps, they didn't attach so here are the pics...hopefully I did this right!