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Sick tetras


jojowhisky

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Hello everyone!

So i found out that something was wrong with my neon and glowlight tetras last week. 
Some of their fins had missing bits, looks like they were chewed off or maybe its what people call finrot. Still so new to this hobby that i went on to research all the possible sicknesses that they might be inflicted with. They had no signs of creepy crawlies coming out of them just seemed off in behaviour really, those fins just did not look whole.
Their gills were for some reason looking very red inside, i didnt recall them looking so red.
And they were losing their colour as well.
There were no white spots on their bodies. The only white markings were on the glowlight tetra, it was on its fin, the portion where the rest of the fin seemed to have rot away.
Did not know what they were suffering from and got desperate because they were constantly sitting at the bottom of the tank. Noticed that they swim very differently from before as well, not sure how to describe it but they were breathing weirdly??
So anyways i read up on all the medications available and because i did not know exactly what they were sick with in the first place, the tons of meds available for specific illnesses were overwhelming for me. I did not want to medicate them wrongly and kill them unintentionally:( 

I went out to get seachem's paraguard. Read that some people use it as a preventive broad spectrum quarrantine drug for new fishes.
The initial plan to scape a new tank for them was set aside and i went out to setup a hospital tank for them instead. Got a plastic tank that had a crack in there;( Anyways, got the paraguard and dosed 1.8mls into the hospital tank daily. (Tank vol:15litres)
Started this paraguard on the 30th nov and today will be the last dose for them. (2week course)
The result was good i guess because nobody died from the meds, their gills became a normal pink colour, they were very active again swimming all over the tank, appetite became better, their colours came back. The only thing is was just the fins that were missing, well those portions were still as it is when i discovered them. But i guess it takes more time to heal.

Lesson for me is to always maintain a hospital tank ready on standby in case something goes wrong. The emergency hospital setup not even planned, i had no spare filters and tank, had a to scramble to the store looking like a mess and worrying about whether everything was gonna work out. 

I hope that nobody here ever has to go through this, that was a stressful week indeed!!

Apologize for the bad picture, these guys are healthy again so it was very difficult to get a good shot of them.
Missing portion of fin. Hope it grows back? 5d3daf5114cbe13d6c7f384e63c7963d.jpg

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Paraguard is for parasites, isn't it?
Get something for fin rot.
Dont really know, i bought it because it marketed itself like a cure all medication.
The stronger alternative is seachem's cupramine if im not wrong.18fd27975d1edd159ffcffd4adfda90b.jpg

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Well that says it's for parasites lol.

But it also does fin rot. So, yeah. All good then. 

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