Angelfish with raw patches on its sides acting sick

JamesG wrote:
Elaine,
I really appreciate your response. I put the Angelfish in my
hospital tank and treated the water with an antifungal medication since
upon further inspection it looked like a fungal infection. I am also
feeding the fish an antibacterial food to hopefully prevent secondary
infections. My fish in the 90-gal all look fine I was planning to feed
them an anti-parasite food followed by an anti-bacterial food just in
case. I am also bringing the temperature in the 90-gal back down to
around 75F. I had it up when I was concerned that that other fish
might have had ich. I have had better luck in the past keeping the
temperature lower. Do you have any recommendations for the temperature
in the hospital tank?

Thank you,
James

First, the fish wouldn't likely have true fungus without damage. Either
physical damage, or ulcers from a bacterial infection can fungus.
Fluffy white edged lesions may be flexibacter rather than fungus - does
your anti-fungal med have an antibacterial ingredient? Most do, because
the symptoms are so similar but doublecheck so you know you're treating
for either true fungus or flexibacter. Antibacterial food is a good
call too, and will help immensely if you're dealing with flexibacter.
Feed for a full 10 days. As for temps, I keep hospitals at 78F. Warm
enough to stimulate the immune system, but not to stress the fish.

I'd worry more about conditions in the 90 gal than trying to treat
seemingly healthy fish. If you feed antibacterial and antiparisitic
food to healthy fish, you will encourage resistant bacteria and your
food may not work the next time the fish are sick. Even worse, if you
haven't fixed whatever is stressing your fish, they will just get sick
once you finish feeding the medicated food.

You've listed ich, fin damage, and now fungus or flexibacter...
something's amiss. Patch of bad gravel or OTS come to mind. If you
want, you can post tank info and whoever is watching this thread will
hopefully help figure it out. Also change more water - do some extra
changes of whatever volume the fish are accustomed to.

--
Elaine T __
http://eethomp.com/fish.html '__
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