Parasites are a bad idea
Sep. 21st, 2003 03:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydyI killed all my glass fish, today. (TMI to follow for the squeamish. Actually, I'm squeamish whenever possible.)
I didn't kill the sick glass fish back on the 10th, like I said I would. Instead, I decided to wait and see if antibiotics would help. The information I got on "whirling disease" was sufficiently contradictory that I wasn't comfortable either with the diagnosis or the suggested treatment (euthanasia -- I guess that's not really a treatment). Meanwhile, my remaining loach has been looking bad. He's emaciated, his fins are clamped, and he's darker in color. One of the white clouds has a ragged caudal fin, probably fin rot, some of the neons and cardinals looked peaked... The loach also developed cotton-mouth, and one of the cardinal tetras has acquired a white spot on his tail. This is not a healthy tank.
I've been watching the loach very closely. His cotton-mouth seems to be resolving, but he's not gaining any weight, and his color is still wrong. While observing the loach today, something about one of the two glass fish still in the aquarium caught my eye. I started looking more closely.
About a month ago, I had thought that the glass fish were constipated due to too many freeze-dried bloodworms. Their organ sac was distended, and one of them was swimming funny for a while. In a couple of days, though, they went back to acting like normal little glass fish, and I stopped worrying about it. Maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe that was the first sign. I don't know.
The organ sac of the fish was very swollen, much more swollen than I'd seen before. That wasn't the really disturbing thing, though. Just behind the skull there was a small mass of tissue that was pink -- presumably bloody tissue of some sort. And behind that there was what looked like a clear bubble -- a rather large clear bubble. It must have been 2mm in length, at least, if not 3 mm. Remember, we're talking a 2 inch fish, here. I looked at the other glass fish, and that one had exactly the same signs; distended organ sac, bloody tissue behind the skull, and a cyst behind the bloody tissue. Parasites. Parasites are what do things like that.
The fish were still acting like normal, happy glass fish. Unlike their compatriot in the hospital tank, they were hovering quite satisfactorily, eating with gusto, and generally pretending to be completely healthy and happy. I guess whatever was happening didn't hurt. I didn't know what they had, or how much longer they might live, but I do know that leaving critters with parasites in with critters that don't have parasites is a great way to get lots more parasites. I also know that fish with cysts and tissue damage like that are not going to survive. David and I went for lunch and errands, with me knowing that I was going to have to kill my fish today. All three of them.
First, though, I had to get Christopher to the air port. Christopher is a long story, which I'll tell some other time. The short version is that he's been living in our media room for 5 months because he couldn't get a job. While Christopher is one of my favorite people, he'd been here too long, and I was happy to see him go -- although I'll miss him. I drove Christopher to the airport. In between being stressed out about the fish and him moving out, it's a wonder we got their alive. My peripheral vision went on holiday, and it's damn hard to drive without it. (I don't know which internal "me" handles peripheral vision, but it is something that goes under stress, sometimes.)
I have a bowl that looks like a small, traditional goldfish bowl. I think it's intended as a vase, actually. It has the advantage of being a reasonable size, clean, and not something people eat out of. While vodka and clove oil are entirely non-toxic to humans, the idea of eating or drinking out of something that was used to murder fish is unsettling to my stomach. I filled the bowl with water from the 20 gallon, then caught the fish and put them in. If I had any doubts about them being sick, the ease with which I netted them would have settled those doubts. I also netted the glass fish in the hospital tank. He was still not responding to treatment, and he probably had the same parasites that the other two did. His organ sac looked swollen, but he didn't have the bloody tissue or the cyst. Well, not much of a cyst, at any rate, but it did look like there was a thing that might be a cyst.
I found that I had made a miscalculation. The shape of the bowl was such that the fish were grotesquely magnified as they swam into view. I'm squeamish. I'm coping, but I'm very squeamish. I've described how the poor dears looked. Seeing it much larger, and somewhat distorted, with the diffraction causing the eyes to look like they were bugging out of the fish's head was extremely unpleasant. I mixed a stronger dose of clove oil and alcohol than I have in the past. I'm still learning how to do this hateful thing. I'm comforted by the fact that clove oil is an anaesthetic, so presumably the fish stop hurting pretty quickly, if they've started. I put two drops of oil in 3/4 of a shot of vodka, stirred vigorously, and then added to the bowl slowly. One of the fish stopped moving almost immediately. The other two swam around the perimeter of the bowl a couple of times, and then stopped. As these things go, it was more pleasant than previous experiences. They didn't twitch or dart. I theorize I'd finally gotten a sufficiently large dose, and so the effects are very quick.
I retreated to my bed, cried for a little (silly but true), then took my laptop out and started playing stupid computer games like Snood and generally distracting myself. I really didn't want to move off the bed, because when I did, I would have to flush the fish down the toilet. I hate that. I don't like looking at dead fish. I don't like it a lot. However, to make sure that the corpses get where they're going (as opposed to on the bathroom floor, or stuck to the inside of the bowl, just for instance) I have to keep track of where the bodies are by eye, and make sure they're moving in the proper directions. Usually, it's not too hard, but it only takes one time of something going wrong and having to fix it with your bare hands to make one extra cautious.
I'm still pretty bummed about having to kill my ghost glass catfish. They were easily the coolest fish I had owned. There are more, but I'm not buying any new fish until I'm sure that the 10 gallon is healthy, and the many health issues in the 20 gallon are resolved.
You know, not only are parasites a bad idea, but I really think that whoever designed in "planned obsolescence" for biological creatures was a total asshole.
I didn't kill the sick glass fish back on the 10th, like I said I would. Instead, I decided to wait and see if antibiotics would help. The information I got on "whirling disease" was sufficiently contradictory that I wasn't comfortable either with the diagnosis or the suggested treatment (euthanasia -- I guess that's not really a treatment). Meanwhile, my remaining loach has been looking bad. He's emaciated, his fins are clamped, and he's darker in color. One of the white clouds has a ragged caudal fin, probably fin rot, some of the neons and cardinals looked peaked... The loach also developed cotton-mouth, and one of the cardinal tetras has acquired a white spot on his tail. This is not a healthy tank.
I've been watching the loach very closely. His cotton-mouth seems to be resolving, but he's not gaining any weight, and his color is still wrong. While observing the loach today, something about one of the two glass fish still in the aquarium caught my eye. I started looking more closely.
About a month ago, I had thought that the glass fish were constipated due to too many freeze-dried bloodworms. Their organ sac was distended, and one of them was swimming funny for a while. In a couple of days, though, they went back to acting like normal little glass fish, and I stopped worrying about it. Maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe that was the first sign. I don't know.
The organ sac of the fish was very swollen, much more swollen than I'd seen before. That wasn't the really disturbing thing, though. Just behind the skull there was a small mass of tissue that was pink -- presumably bloody tissue of some sort. And behind that there was what looked like a clear bubble -- a rather large clear bubble. It must have been 2mm in length, at least, if not 3 mm. Remember, we're talking a 2 inch fish, here. I looked at the other glass fish, and that one had exactly the same signs; distended organ sac, bloody tissue behind the skull, and a cyst behind the bloody tissue. Parasites. Parasites are what do things like that.
The fish were still acting like normal, happy glass fish. Unlike their compatriot in the hospital tank, they were hovering quite satisfactorily, eating with gusto, and generally pretending to be completely healthy and happy. I guess whatever was happening didn't hurt. I didn't know what they had, or how much longer they might live, but I do know that leaving critters with parasites in with critters that don't have parasites is a great way to get lots more parasites. I also know that fish with cysts and tissue damage like that are not going to survive. David and I went for lunch and errands, with me knowing that I was going to have to kill my fish today. All three of them.
First, though, I had to get Christopher to the air port. Christopher is a long story, which I'll tell some other time. The short version is that he's been living in our media room for 5 months because he couldn't get a job. While Christopher is one of my favorite people, he'd been here too long, and I was happy to see him go -- although I'll miss him. I drove Christopher to the airport. In between being stressed out about the fish and him moving out, it's a wonder we got their alive. My peripheral vision went on holiday, and it's damn hard to drive without it. (I don't know which internal "me" handles peripheral vision, but it is something that goes under stress, sometimes.)
I have a bowl that looks like a small, traditional goldfish bowl. I think it's intended as a vase, actually. It has the advantage of being a reasonable size, clean, and not something people eat out of. While vodka and clove oil are entirely non-toxic to humans, the idea of eating or drinking out of something that was used to murder fish is unsettling to my stomach. I filled the bowl with water from the 20 gallon, then caught the fish and put them in. If I had any doubts about them being sick, the ease with which I netted them would have settled those doubts. I also netted the glass fish in the hospital tank. He was still not responding to treatment, and he probably had the same parasites that the other two did. His organ sac looked swollen, but he didn't have the bloody tissue or the cyst. Well, not much of a cyst, at any rate, but it did look like there was a thing that might be a cyst.
I found that I had made a miscalculation. The shape of the bowl was such that the fish were grotesquely magnified as they swam into view. I'm squeamish. I'm coping, but I'm very squeamish. I've described how the poor dears looked. Seeing it much larger, and somewhat distorted, with the diffraction causing the eyes to look like they were bugging out of the fish's head was extremely unpleasant. I mixed a stronger dose of clove oil and alcohol than I have in the past. I'm still learning how to do this hateful thing. I'm comforted by the fact that clove oil is an anaesthetic, so presumably the fish stop hurting pretty quickly, if they've started. I put two drops of oil in 3/4 of a shot of vodka, stirred vigorously, and then added to the bowl slowly. One of the fish stopped moving almost immediately. The other two swam around the perimeter of the bowl a couple of times, and then stopped. As these things go, it was more pleasant than previous experiences. They didn't twitch or dart. I theorize I'd finally gotten a sufficiently large dose, and so the effects are very quick.
I retreated to my bed, cried for a little (silly but true), then took my laptop out and started playing stupid computer games like Snood and generally distracting myself. I really didn't want to move off the bed, because when I did, I would have to flush the fish down the toilet. I hate that. I don't like looking at dead fish. I don't like it a lot. However, to make sure that the corpses get where they're going (as opposed to on the bathroom floor, or stuck to the inside of the bowl, just for instance) I have to keep track of where the bodies are by eye, and make sure they're moving in the proper directions. Usually, it's not too hard, but it only takes one time of something going wrong and having to fix it with your bare hands to make one extra cautious.
I'm still pretty bummed about having to kill my ghost glass catfish. They were easily the coolest fish I had owned. There are more, but I'm not buying any new fish until I'm sure that the 10 gallon is healthy, and the many health issues in the 20 gallon are resolved.
You know, not only are parasites a bad idea, but I really think that whoever designed in "planned obsolescence" for biological creatures was a total asshole.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-09-21 06:01 am (UTC)I find it sad that there isn't more medical help for fish. But then, if there were, there'd be the issue of paying for it, which is no small thing.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-21 07:41 am (UTC)Preteen lolitas
Date: 2004-05-13 09:25 am (UTC)PRETEEN LOLITA PICS (http://preteen-lolita.info)
Preteen lolitas
Date: 2004-05-13 09:40 am (UTC)PRETEEN LOLITA PICS (http://preteen-lolita.info)
fish
Date: 2006-04-19 05:30 am (UTC)came across this entry randomly when searching clear bubble in the context of fish parasites.... my fish has looked very unhealthy for a long time now, i would say about six months, and you seem like you know a lot about fish. i've been researching web sites, but i can't really be sure about anything i read, and i don't want to mis-medicate her. anyway, i am surprised she is still alive. wen shes swimming around she looks osmewhat normal, but usually she just sights in a corner at the bottom of the tank, nose down or sometimes at the top of the tank nose up. she has a clear bubble about the size of a pea (she is about two inches long, four or five if you count her tail) coming out of her butt. usually she has a long trail coming out of there, black or pink, i figured it was just excrement, but now theres this bubble there...her scales are dull and look puffed out, and she is extremely sluggish. i have tried medicating her in the past, changing the water, but to no avail, but since she has survived this long i wrote off that she was actually sick. but the water is foggy, consistantly, and this is definitely not a normal fish. it depresses me so i leave the light off. im really in despair as to what to do with her, i don't know if i should have euthanized her or what. she is a fan-tail gold fish. do you have any advice? i would really appreciate it! thanks very much and i'm sorry to hear about your fish : (.
best,
nora