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Every now and again a fish will, for no apparent reason, virtually waste away; turn out to be hollow bellied, listless, and lie around on rocks or on the sandy bottom in a most dejected manner. The contributing factors to this malady are underfeeding, an unsatisfactory diet, overcrowding, or water which has been too warm or too cold over a period.

Fish suffering from wasting seldom survive. I have tried numerous treatments with out any one single case of real success. The only treatment to try is a general conditioning. Permit lots of room for movement, feed live food (beef scraped with a knife is also generally an acceptable tit-bit), chopped earthworm or daphnia.

Fish do eventually die of old age, in which case they naturally waste away.

Parasitic organisms known as Gyrodactylus and Dactylogyrtts are the trigger of flukes, which are extremely contagious. They lodge in the gills and under the skin causing the fish to swim about in a wild and jerky manner, suddenly coming to a stop with every appearance of exhaustion.

Again there are numerous treatments for this illness, but the most effective one, in my experience, is the formaldehyde bath. You make up a bath of clear water, to which you add 20 drops per gallon of formaldehyde, then immerse the fish for between 5 to 8 minutes or until it shows signs of discomfort or exhaustion. The treatment should be repeated in two days, after which the fish should be cured.

An additional efficient treatment would be to place the fish in a bath made up of one component of (20 vols) hydrogen peroxide to five-hundred parts of water. The fish should be left in this answer for a number of hours.

When it is essential to treat the majority of fish in an established aquarium, make a answer by dissolving 15 grains of methylene blue in three.5 fluid ounces of water.

This answer is then added to the aquarium in the proportion of one or two cubic centimetres to every gallon of water.

Naturally the water in the aquarium will turn very blue, but within a couple of days it’ll regain its regular clarity. It is not essential to change the water, or to repeat the treatment.

An additional technique would be to immerse the affected fish in a bath containing one drop of glacial acetic acid to every ounce of water. Repeat treatment after 48 hours.

The swim bladder is the organ of depth control, and acts similarly to the ballast tanks of a submarine, but instead of being filled with water, a gas developed in the fish is the medium of altering buoyancy.

It’ll be appreciated that in the delicately balanced bladder of a fish, the gas pressure should be precisely correct, if it is to swim freely where-ever it desires. If there’s too small gas it’ll sink, and with too a lot it stays on the surface.

Gases which form internally via other causes, like indigestion, occasionally have a temporary effect, but any prolonged upset will certainly be a defective swim bladder, which regrettably is generally incurable.

Shimmies is much more a sympton than a illness, it is the outward sign that all isn’t as it should be.

The fish generally stops in one position waving its body from side to side like a hula dancer, the movement being slow and constant.

Fish with Ichthyophthirius are liable to act in this manner; indigestion, chills, etc. are other feasible causes.

Totally changing the water frequently cures this trouble. It is believed that a micro-organism in the water of a none too clean tank can bring on this condition.

If a change of water fails, increase the temperature to a steady 80°F and feed sparingly.

Fungus is the white slimy coating that fish develop following an attack of Ichthyophthirius, which has not been cured. It may also develop indepen-dently, but is rather rare in tropicals. Bruises, chills, wrongful feeding, attacks by other fish, and dirty aquariums are all feasible causes of fungus.

The fish should be put into a container of water devoid of vegetation, containing two level teaspoons of salt per gallon of water. Sea salt is much better than typical salt. If after 24 hours no improvement is seen, add two much more teaspoons of salt, and, if by the third day no change is noticed, add an additional teaspoon.

When the fish is cured, don’t put it straight back into its regular tank with out initial adding fresh water gradually, over a period of two days, to lower the salt content. This ensures that it is not subjected to a drastic change of water which may have an adverse effect on a fish just recovering from an illness.

This illness could be recognized by a yellow-brown film which starts near the dorsal fin, and, if left unchecked, it’ll spread all over the body in a velvet-like film.

To treat, dissolve one tablet of Acriflavine (0.46 grain, obtainable from chemists) in eighty drops of hot water, then add five drops of this answer to every gallon of water to be treated.

During this treatment the aquarium should be kept dark, and artificially aerated. Repeat treatment after five days.