# What is wrong with this fish? Photos, video included



## pH7 (Dec 5, 2011)

Would you please be so kind as to take a look at these photos and the video at the following link? They are pictures and video of the fish that became sick in my quarantine tank. He came in with other fish of the same breed, but he alone has had problems. Notice the frayed fins and the way the fish is lying on its side. I'm not sure what this means.

This fish has since passed over to the other side in the big aquarium in the sky, but I would still appreciate your ideas on what might have gone wrong with this fish, so I can avoid this same problem in the future. I haven't had a fish death in some time, but this fish death has no familiar symptoms to me, how does it look to you?

Please see--
What Is Wrong With This Fish pictures by aquariumninja - Photobucket

~pH7, Aquarium Ninja


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

He is dying for sure. It looks like there were other Dwarf Gouramis males in there with it. That cannot happen, especially in a smaller tank. They are very territoria. Not sure how many you have, but eventually there will be only one. You may not see any rough fighting, but eventually even the stress it causes between the others will end up killing them.


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## navigator black (Jan 3, 2012)

He's a honey gourami in full colour when sick - probably hormone treated back at the farm before he was sent to the store. Often, it can be hard to get females of the honey gourami, as many farms in Asia hormone treat fry to make colorful males. Colorful hormone treated males fight (testosterone raises color), fraying fins.
So I suspect it was murder.


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## pH7 (Dec 5, 2011)

navigator black said:


> He's a honey gourami in full colour when sick - probably hormone treated back at the farm before he was sent to the store. Often, it can be hard to get females of the honey gourami, as many farms in Asia hormone treat fry to make colorful males. Colorful hormone treated males fight (testosterone raises color), fraying fins.
> So I suspect it was murder.


MURDER?! GAAA! But the fish had no visible problems. It wasn't even breathing heavily. The only thing was fraying at the tail, and bad fraying. It didn't look like he had been getting picked on (I'm assuming the fish was male due to coloration).

Someone told me it looked fungal. What does that mean though? I understand bacterial and viral infections, but fungal? I don't grasp that, or see how something can die because the fungus was external.

Thoughts on the above?


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## navigator black (Jan 3, 2012)

When gouramis really fight, and don't just spar, they like to hit under their enemy, at the very back of the gills. When they hit there, they can disable a target in a split second. They don't pick at each other all over - they whack a lethal spot.
They should be peaceful, but. 
The fraying makes me think he had dropped to the bottom of the pecking order - and he was a certain male. females are colorless (hence the hitting them with hormones to make them males - most fish hatch with no determined sex).
Fungus is always a secondary symptom of an underlying bigger problem. usually, there's a bacterial infection, and fungus moves in.

The poor guy could have just keeled over from an organ failure, etc. I don't think it 'happened' in your set up - you probably just got the tail end of the process.


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

That just looks like a stress death to me. The fish never have to touch to die when it comes to Darf Gouramis. They will die from the stress they cause each other. I have lost 3 of them this way and neither had anything visibly wrong with them.


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## holly12 (Apr 21, 2011)

^ agreed! _The fish in your video isn't a Honey Gourami, he's a Dwarf Fire Gourami - colour morph of a reg' Dwarf Gourami_. I had 1 male Dwarf Fire Gourami and 3 females... he was particularly aggressive, and pestered and attacked the females to death. He eventually got a swim bladder disorder and died.

I have 4 _Fire Honey Gourami - colour morph of a reg' Honey Gourami_ - (note they are different from Dwarf Fire's, size diff' and temperament diff'!) in my 20g - 1 male and 3 females and they all get along fine. When the male wants to breed, he turns dark orange, with a black bottom half and white outlines on his fins (he's normally a mid-orange), and chases the girls, but not aggressively. The girls seem to get along as well... the odd chasing goes on, but they hang out together often.

I'd NEVER have more than 1 male gourami (of any species) in a small tank.... to me, that's anything under 55g and I'd be nervous having 2 males in a 55g too! I'd maaaaybe chance 2 male Honeys in a 55g because of their very docile temperament, but ONLY if the tank had a clear division in it where they could set up their own territories and only if there were enough females for the both of them.


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## navigator black (Jan 3, 2012)

The dwarf fire gourami is, as far as I can tell, another lab fish. The 'platform' is the honey gourami (_chuna)_, but the size says there's_ lalia_ (dwarf gourami) in the mix. They shouldn't be described using a species name as they aren't natural species. These are frankenfish - there's not much to be learned from them, but you have to CSI their past to guess at behavior when things go wrong.Honeys and dwarfs act very differently, with honeys being more peaceful. I haven't seen a real honey in many years. It's a tiny fish.


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## pH7 (Dec 5, 2011)

navigator black said:


> When gouramis really fight, and don't just spar, they like to hit under their enemy, at the very back of the gills. When they hit there, they can disable a target in a split second. They don't pick at each other all over - they whack a lethal spot.
> They should be peaceful, but.
> The fraying makes me think he had dropped to the bottom of the pecking order - and he was a certain male. females are colorless (hence the hitting them with hormones to make them males - most fish hatch with no determined sex).
> Fungus is always a secondary symptom of an underlying bigger problem. usually, there's a bacterial infection, and fungus moves in.
> ...


What makes an attack to the bottom-back of the gills so instantly lethal? Sounds very kung-fuish.


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## navigator black (Jan 3, 2012)

I don't know. When a female Apistogramma dwarf cichlid wants her male dead, that's also where they hit. I've (unfortunately) seen it as it happened. I've never taken out a diagram of that part of their bodies to see - I probably should sometime.
I've seen pearl gouramis really going at that spot, when one fish was really on the ropes. I always assumed it was a major blood vessel, but assuming doesn't get you far. 
I saw an Apistogramma cacatuoides that had rudely decided to eat his children get whacked there by a fry defending female, and he was dead (unmarked) before he hit the sand. With gouramis who attacked there, I had dead fish pretty quickly, til I caught the pattern. Now, if I see a fish going for the base of the gills, I remove the target fish as soon as I can.


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## holly12 (Apr 21, 2011)

My Fire Honeys are about 1.5-1.75"........that sound right? Our Dwarf Fire Gourami was 3" at least.


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## navigator black (Jan 3, 2012)

We're getting fish sold here as fire honeys that are 2.5 inches. The Bangladeshi _chuna honey gourami tops out at 1.5. It's prettier (IMHO) than the fishfarm creations, but it only colours up for courtship. The hybrid/hormone/whatever versions hold their colour longer, so they sell way better. 
I'm lost in the trade names now - there are so many man-made gourami versions that have appeared over the past ten years that the only gouramis you see in stores that look like natural fish are pearls. 
For a few years, there was a scarlet version of the dwarf gourami that sold like mad here, but it became known that the colour faded after a few months and rarely returned, because of the treatments. You don't see as many now, and the metallic blue forms have replaced them.
I'm an unfashionable wild-form purist though. 

BtW, In Canada, fish farm gouramis will soon require veterinary permits to be imported, as they are carriers of a virus deemed dangerous to native species should it get out. They aren't the easist fish to buy healthy._


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