Sick Flowerhorn

[Fishpony]

Hello Everyone.
I have a flower horn that stopped accepting pellets and has a sunken belly.
I had recently moved my 7" flower horn to a 29 tank, and after the tank move, he seemed quite normal. I understand that the tank is small for him, I'll deal with that in the future once he's back to normal. The tank is filtered with a large sponge filter and 2 aquaclear 50s. One has your standard sponge, filter floss, and ceramic media. The other one is just filled with ceramic media. I moved him to the tank on 3/17, and I did give the media a quick shake/rinse in old tank water to dislodge debris and such. I don't know the water parameters, because I, unfortunately, don't have any test kits on hand. I'm gonna go to Petco and PetSmart after posting this so I can get my water tested and I'll post the results. I'd imagine the water quality is at least acceptable, and not the cause of why he's not eating. Anyways, he always had a round belly, and after the move, I guess he's always been a little constipated cause the new tank helped him pass a lot of his feces. Now, he has a worryingly sunken belly, all in the span of about 3 days. He won't accept pellets, but there still is a feeding response, it's like he goes for them, makes a coughing motion with his jaw, and then turns away. I've gotten him to eat some bloodworms, however. Besides the obvious sunken belly, there isn't much of a physical change in his shape. His Kok has not deflated, and his colors have not changed in a noticeable way. But today he's now quite lethargic, hanging either near the top of the tank or near the bottom. I did get him to eat a small number of bloodworms.
I pretty much exclusively fed him Hikari cichlid gold, and I've had him for I think almost a year.
There are no other tank mates with him.
The tank is about 76 f, and one side is noticeably more sunken in than the other.
I haven't seen any white stringy feces, all of his stools have been normal.
I want to know what I can do to get him healthy again.

 

[kno4te]

If it’s taking blood worms then try and grind up hex shield and mix with the bloodworms. Feed to the flowerhorn if able. Recheck that water ASAP.

 

[Fishpony]

Heres the water test report
Ammonia is at 0
Nitrate is at 30 ppm
Nitrite at .5 ppm
Hardness is at 200 ppm, but AZ has very hard water
Alkalinity is between 120 and 180 ppm
Ph 7.8

I'm gonna do a quick 25% water change to get that nitrate and nitrite down.

 

[kno4te]

Dose a dechlorinator with every water change. Need to do larger water changes. Atleast 50% a week.

 

[Fishpony]

If it’s taking blood worms then try and grind up hex shield and mix with the bloodworms. Feed to the flowerhorn if able. Recheck that water ASAP.

I don't know if I can source a hex shield atm since I'll have to order it in. So far I've just defrosted bloodworms in a 3% Epsom salt solution and fed some to him, but I don't think that'll do much.

 

[Fishpony]

Dose a dechlorinator with every water change. Need to do larger water changes. Atleast 50% a week.

Gotcha. I can bump it up to a 50%

 

[Fishpony]

Also, I typically do 60-70% water changes a week.

 

[Fishpony]

I noticed his pectoral fins have been deteriorating somewhat and he's developed some buoyancy issues. He's not floating but he's having a hard time staying upright, he's swimming like in a headstand almost. I've added some Epsom salt to the water and I also started a dose of erythromycin. Once the treatment is done, I'll just keep doing daily 30% water changes and hope for the best. I'm also bumping up the temp to 80 F. I haven't made any attempts to feed him, I don't want to create any more waste in the water since my biofilter is already taking a hit with the erythromycin and in the state he's in I doubt he's gonna eat. I have some spare cycled media so I can just transfer it over after treatment, or if I stop the treatment early in favor of the daily water changes.

 

[Fishpony]

I think it's appropriate to update this thread.

Long story short, from what I can tell, He's at least 80-90% recovered. His Kok has shrunk quite a bit but I think it's slowly coming back, and he has a small scar from where his abdomen was above the water.

Shortly after my last post, he went belly up, it looked like when you stick a balloon or a basketball under your shirt, and a decent portion of his abdomen was sticking out of the water. I finished the erythromycin treatment and just did daily 25-50% water changes with about a tbs of Epsom salt per 5 gallons and hoped that he'd recover, but honestly, it didn't look good at all. I'd say about 3 days after he went belly up I reduced the tank's water level to about 40% and just continued changing water. I was contemplating either attempted to air out his swim bladder with a needle or even euthanize him during that time. He would occasionally thrash about and attempt to right himself, and then one day he managed to recover enough and regain some balance and was able to sit at the bottom of the tank right side up, but the moment he stopped to rest he'd float right back up. He didn't eat much at the time but I'd just swirl some bloodworms on a chopstick and he'd swim up to eat them. After a few days, his appetite returned enough to accept soaked pellets, so I began to feed him pellets soaked in a 3% Epsom salt solution. I just kept doing that with daily water changes and he's almost bounced back completely.
I've also upgraded the filtration with an AC110, and I'm thinking about doing another round of soaking his food in an Epsom salt solution just as a preventative. As of now, I've been focusing on keeping the water as pristine as possible.