Looking at the aquarium, seeing your fish is swimming all day, you might think that your fish is okay all the time. You may see that everything is okay and your fish is living its life peacefully without any problems. However, your fish may experience something wrong with its health.
A problem that every fish owner is afraid of is the fish that keeps dying. You can explore the reasons why your fish keeps dying.
Seeing your fish is sick will make you feel sad. The best thing you can do to help your sick fish is by bringing it to the vet. However, before you decide to bring your fish to your pet, you must know the symptoms that tell your fish is sick and some treatments you can do at home and the prevention from getting sick again. Check them out!
Symptoms of Sick Fish
Before bringing your pet fish to the vet or deciding the best treatment for your sick fish, you need to know the symptoms first. Let’s check these symptoms of a sick fish and the possible sickness your fish might have:
The symptoms of bacterial infection are tattered finks and tails. The skin sores and the abdomen area is swollen. Besides, your fish will also have bulging eyes and red skin.
The bacteria causing this infection are Aeromonas and Pseudomonas. This bacterial infection is mainly caused by bad water quality.
Flavobacterium is the main bacteria in charge of this viral infection. The symptom of viral infection is the presence of white pimples on the skin and fins. This viral infection is caused by contaminated live food. Besides, the presence of new fish might also cause the viral infection.
This is a behavioral symptom you can see while your fish is swimming. Your fish might swim in place without moving forward. Cool temperatures or chill often causes this shimmies.
Your fish might swim in an unusual way. It might start bumping into an object or along the gravel. Besides, your fish might attempt to “scratch” itself too. This is what we call flashing. Flashing can be caused by external parasites.
Fish is likely to swim in a group of its own species. Healthy behavior is often seen when the fish have big space to swim on their own. You need to be aware once one or two fish are not swimming with their group. If you plan to have some fish as your pets, you can check freshwater fish to put in your fish tank.
What to Do If You Get a Sick Fish?
There are some ways of treatment you can do at home to treat your sick fish. Here are the things to do to treat your sick fish.
- Always get the new fish quarantined – we never know whether the new fish is healthy or bringing some parasites or virus to the aquarium. Please do check first by quarantining them in a separate place to make sure everything is safe.
- Prepare aquarium salt – aquarium salt is a good therapy for fish that gets infection. It helps to soothe the infection. Salt is also good for breeding catfishes, you can see the benefits of salt for breeding catfishes.
- Adjust the temperature of the water – adjusting water temperature in aquarium will end the life cycle of parasites inside the aquarium.
- Maintain good quality of water – good quality of water will give good quality of your fish life. Good water quality is also prevent your fish from getting any diseases.
- Avoid ammonia or nitrites exposure – ammonia and nitrites are toxins for fish. High amount of ammonia and nitrites from fish waste and remaining food will be harmful for your fish. Make sure these substances are absent in your aquarium. Ammonia and nitrites are the main causes of cloudy water in aquarium.
- Feed your fish with nutritious food – by giving nutritious food, your fish will get all the nutrients it needs for its body. The nutrients are good to maintain its health. You can take a good example of nutritional food to feed your beta fishes.
Keeping fish as pets might be simple but it takes more attention to be aware of your fish condition. Make sure you are aware of your fish condition to prevent the worst condition.
You can see some posts related to caring for fish such as the essential things for your fish tank and some plants for your fish tank and how they are beneficial.