# Vertical swimming/fin rot/tank fungus



## SnappyPeacock (Sep 18, 2013)

I have a 65gal tank with 6 African cichlids (1 yellow lab, 2 sunshine peacocks, 3 dragon's blood peacocks). Four days ago I noticed my dominant dragon's blood male (2.7 years old) was swimming head up, tail down. He could swim normally when he swam more quickly but eventually the vertical swimming got worse. No sign of injury and I have never witnessed my fish fighting and I look at the tank a lot! 

I performed water 40% water changes for three days to see if that helped, which it did not. also, zero ammonia readings, zero nitrite, 30ppm nitrate readings before water changes. But about 8 days before the vertical swimming I had pushed back a water change longer than I should have and I suspect an infection took hold then. The third day of his vertical swimming I moved him to a 10gal quarantine tank because I did not want the other fish to stress him out or pick on him. By this time he would not eat anymore. I tried to feed him peas as I suspected he might be constipated but he would not eat them. I noticed his fins were frayed but I assumed the other fish were harassing him (which seemed odd but maybe I had not seen them fighting). 

I decided to use Epsom salt in hopes it would help him poop. It did and the poop looked kind of pale and stringy. I did another water change and decided I should medicate. Normally I would have just used aquarium salt and water changes but I feared he had early symptoms of dropsy. His scales looked odd, not pine coned but they looked irritated and I worried they were becoming pine coned. So I began using maracyn and maracyn 2. The first day of medication, not much change in his condition. The next day i saw he had red streaks on his fins and I saw pieces of his fins had fallen on the ground. In horror, I realized he had fin rot. I also saw a small red looking vein above his eye. I did a water change to get out all the rotting flesh.

On the third day the rotting appeared to slow down but I did see some fin pieces. The redness looked much better and his swimming was better. At this point i started seeing what looked like fungus(fuzzy and white with small hairs) growing on a plant I put in his QT. there were also spots of it on the inside walls of the tank near where his bubble stone shoots up bubbles. I washed off the plant and suctioned off as much fungus as I could. Nothing was on the fish's body anywhere. 

Today is the fourth day of treatment and the fungus came back so I again took out as much as I could and the fish is swimming well. His fins look much better. I tried feeding him though and i noticed he started swimming slightly vertically again. Not as bad though. 

What do you guys think he could be sick with? Is this fungus normal with medication?? Sorry for the long post! 
Thanks in advance


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## SnappyPeacock (Sep 18, 2013)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-PJuR1SWyU&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Video of him. His eyes look cloudy but they're not. Just glare. Note times when he droops his tail. *c/p*


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## Gizmo (Dec 6, 2010)

Sounds like he had a swim bladder infection to start, possibly with some internal parasites, and then over-medication caused secondary fin rot and fungus to take hold. I would say back off of everything but the epsom salts, and try feeding him medicated fish food soaked in garlic juice.


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