My fish Nigel recently died. He has been sick for a long time and I have been unable to figure out what is wrong with him. He is a mix between a blue eyed cichlid and something else that I don't know. About a year ago he became very bloated, one of my other fish died of bloat around the same time so I originally thought this was bloat. But he acted exactly the same and did not pass away, but never seemed to get better. We treated him with general cure and I tried feeding him mostly peas and vegetables but nothing changed. The past 3 months he has been loosing some scales and had a white film over his sides (as well as some areas with no scales) .We treated him with a bunch of medications over the months to try and get rid of this but nothing changed at all and he acted fine still. He died very suddenly this week, his sides got worse and he was laying on his side(he was acting normal and his sides looked as usual the night before). No other fish have been infected with anything over the past year. I have no idea what this is. Whatever it is is not infectious and does not change fish behaviour. He is an old fish (at least 8, I got him full grown 6 years ago) but he clearly died of whatever this thing was, I would appreciate any help figuring out what happened to him. I just hate that I couldn't help him and he died like that.
My fish died of a strange illness?
- Thread starter snowflace2
- Start date
Hmmm. Sounds like it could have been columnaris. Here's the definition: Columnaris (also referred to as cottonmouth) is a symptom of disease in fish which results from an infection caused by the Gram-negative, aerobic, rod-shaped bacterium Flavobacterium columnare. he bacteria are ubiquitous in fresh water, and cultured fish reared in ponds or raceways are the primary concern – with disease most prevalent in air temperatures above 12–14 °C. It is often mistaken for a fungal infection. The disease is highly contagious and the outcome is often fatal. It is not zoonotic. Here is a picture of an extreme case:
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His sides never got fussy like that, they were always smooth and almost looked like he was attacked or like his skin was thinning later on. Less like something was growing on him. I should have explained it better, here's a picture of him. Sorry for the bad quality I don't have many pictures of him when he was sick.
Thanks, but I don't think so, I have seen that site before and those that have similar symptoms as him are infectious or kill a lot faster.