Redside Dace Help

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divemaster99

Dovii
MFK Member
Jan 10, 2014
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Pittsburgh, PA
1 of the 4 redside dace in my 20 high isn't doing to good. It hasn't eaten since I added it last Tuesday, its caudal peduncle and caudal fin appear to be much paler than the rest of it, and it's having a harder time swimming. I think it's pretty much to late but I wanted to check if there was anything I could do for it. It's in a heavily planted 24"x12"x16" with tankmates of 3 other redside dace, 4 silverjaw minnows, 2 Greenside darters, 2 swamp darters, 1 rainbow darter, 2 bluefin killifish, and 1 Pugnose minnow (I know that sounds overstocked but they're all fairly small with the sick 3.5" dace being the largest fish and I'm upgrading to a 30L very soon). Filtration is a sponge and a lot of plants including hornwort, water sprite, and carpet algae and I do 50% WCs once a week. Any suggestions or advice at all would be much appreciated!
 
Here's a (crappy) picture.

I know it's kind of morbid but what if I amputated the "dying" part of his body, would it grow back? I got my female bluefin killi without a caudal fin and it grew back completely in 2 weeks. I'm not sure if that applies to the peduncle though.

image.jpg
 
That looks like it was either lack of blood flow, or a damaged spinal cord... that would not have grown back also. I had a very similar problem with one of my pickerel. His spine severed just before his tail
 
That looks like it was either lack of blood flow, or a damaged spinal cord... that would not have grown back also. I had a very similar problem with one of my pickerel. His spine severed just before his tail

Good to know, wonder how it happened. It was fighting with the one of the other ones there other day pretty roughly and it may have happened then but I'm not sure.
 
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