Well - I came back from our week-long trip to find that, although she seems perky and is eating well, poor Poly's tail is much, much worse. I'd say moderately bad tailrot at this stage, and it's hard to figure out why, since everyone says tailrot is related to bad water quality, and, as far as I can tell, her water quality hasn't been bad. What she's got is several jagged-looking tears in her tail, about where the white stuff was, and the longest tear is also red on the inside and whitish on the outside. It's her tail only - still eating well, swimming well, and holding her fins out, poor little girl. I have called Dr. Tepper today, and am also going to call the jungle people again, but here is what I can tell you about her conditions:

2 inch calico fantial in a 20 long with eclipse filter that's supposed to move 250gph; eco-aqualizer still on there (I may take it off; will tell you why later). No ammonia, no nitrites, nitrates about 10, pH very high at 8.2 (tap pH is only about 7.2. The longer between water changes, the higher her pH. This worries me, and I'm going to take off the aqualizer for a week or two to see if the pH stabilizes - but I think there may be something else going on here. Could the clay flowerpots be raising the pH? If so, what can I use instead? I'm pretty sure a rising and falling pH every week can't be helping Poly's health much - it drops down to 'normal' (7.8 or so) after a water change.) She's been eating medigold - about 6 pellets a day - for two weeks now. One mistake I may have made is that her autofeeder only provides for 14 meals, and I wanted her to get some meds in her every day, so I only gave her one meal a day for the ten days I was away. I'm stepping it up to two meals a day again, about 4-5 pellets every time.

Symptoms other than the finrot: few to none. She does flash slightly, but not severely or often, so I don't know if she's got a parasite problem going on as well. Her gills look okay to me, though her gill covers are slightly curled; her blacks are changing to orange, but otherwise her skin/slime coat looks all right to my relatively inexperienced eyes. Unfortunately, I don't have a microscope and can't do a scrape.

Steps taken, and results: Yikes! When she had the 3-d white growth on her tail shortly after I got her, Sal at the LFS recommended salt and melafix, which I did religiously for a week or so. The growths diminished. Then, after her tank cycled, the white spots on her tail made a comeback. Then her tail (which is fused) split. I have tried a 0.3 percent salt solution, maracyn, Jungle fungus clear (which helped. but didn't clear it up entirely), and now, after a week's break, neosulfex. Oh - I also did a 10 minute salt dip. I'm really stumped here, and want to get her well1

dang! i was hoping to hear some good news.

so you say you see some flashing here and there? combined with that and the persistant tail-rot, you might be dealing with flukes. flukes are notorious for causing persistant tailrot and other lesions here and there. i sure hope that its not.

can you by chance buy a cheapo microscope from somewhere? i think you might be able to get one for less than 50 dollars. all it needs to do is 400X magnification to plainly see flukes on a slide. this would be a sure fire way to diagnose her for flukes.

however, your ph still worries me. as you may know, ammonia is way more toxic at a higher ph. and, of course, toxic ammonia can and will cause tailrot. i seem to be a little foggy so, could you tell me if your ph was rising before you started the equalizer (sp?). if so, what is the results for the tapwater and from the tank (ph/gh/kh)?

post back soon.

paul

Hi, Paul, and thanks for getting back so quickly. As to the pH, yes, it was. My pH in the tank has always been at least 0.4 to 0.6 above that from the tap, but it was usually pretty stable, between 7.4 and (at its highest) 7.8. In this tank, it's been higher than I've ever seen it. Possible reasons: more offgassing of CO2 because of the current from the aqualizer; some sort of minerals from the pots and/or soil; loss of CO2 due to photosynthesis. I can't think of anything else. Dr. Tepper, who got back to me tonight, doesn't think any of these are likely to cause problems, because pH swings are common in tanks and ponds with plants and, if they are small, they don't cause the fish a lot of stress (he says?).

I know a lot of things are toxic at higher pH, but no test I have shows any ammonia at all in the tank.

Dr. Tepper wants me to bring her in ( a 2 hour drive) or ship her overnight fed ex so he can hospitalize her and give her shots. He thinks it's quite curable, but that waterborne antibiotics don't penetrate the slime coat well, so we need to get antibiotics into her bloodstream. At the same time, he wants to do a scrape and to (maybe) test her water. This is pretty intimidating to me! I'd prefer to drive her, but just can't get the time off to do it anytime soon. What do you think?

She seems pretty happy (and very hungry), but her poor tail looks terrible. A picture follows-

Okay - so I was gearing up to ship her to the doctor somehow, and it turns out that Fedex won't ship goldfish! What do I do about this?! Has anyone ever shipped a fish - if so, how, exactly, do you do it and how do you get around the legal strictures? (I never thought I'd be asking this, being an extremely law abiding person, but I'm almost desparate to get this little critter to the doctor now) Help!

maybe you could try another mailing company. us mail or ups or something. i know one of them has to do it. otherwise, we wouldnt be able to ship fish at all..........

i hope the doc can do her some good. also, im sure that22 do a skin scrape to rule out parasites.

paul