I just noticed her right bubble was deflated a bit and red/orange. With a closer look it seems her eye fell into her bubble, she's swimming normally though.

I don't have param readings yet, need to take them into the petstore tomorrow. But I did a 90% water change with Amquel + before I noticed this. She's in the 20 still with my other fish. 170 and 100 bio-wheel filtration.

There's really nothing I can think of that caused this. Nothing in the tank is sharp, there's only river rocks, live plants and a driftwood.

She has a tiny bit of fin rot, but can I treat that with trisulfa now that her eye is missing? Ugh this is so horrible, I can't put the 55 up untill December so I've got 5 fish in a 20 and struggling to keep the water pristine. She's not acting unusual but God forbid she's in pain! Ah, please, I don't know what to do.

O my word!!! That sounds horrible! The poor little fish. I hope she isn't in any pain either! I don't know what you could do, but hopefully someone will! Good luck with that Tam!

That's an interesting one Tam as the same thing has happened to a baby celestial I have. I rescued her from the lfs where she was dying and not only was she doing poorly but the guy dropped the bag on the floor. Well she survived but then i noticed her eye was sinking into her head - and parts of the flesh had worn away

I think it was bacterial and she responded well to a broad spectrum antibiotic although as you can imagine, she has absolutely no sight left in her eye (not that seeing everthing above you can be called anything but distorted...).

Then a couple of weeks later, her eye became swollen and looked like there was a massive cataract or white filmy growth - so i didn't think the infection had fully cleared. Instead of adding more meds - i put salt in her tank and the swelling reduced in a couple of days.

So perhaps you could try salting her tank to 0.1% - this should help give some relief and it may be all she needs.

Do you have any medicated food you can give her?

I hope her eye heals soon

Also, is the bubble deflated? Is the eye sitting on top of the deflated bubble? Can you tell? When the bubble inflates again, the eye may go back into position. The bubble will inflate again. It can take a couple of weeks.

I have found that often a bubble with deflate even when there isn't any objects for a fish to damage them on. I am wondering if they just get so large that the pressure causes them to leak a bit.

As Jen suggested, salting the tank to 0.1% would be a good idea.

Please let us know how things are going.

I do not have any medicated foods, but she's been eating Hikari lionhead food for the high spirtulina content, fresh cucmbers and I catch her eating the algae disks for the BN's.

Her bubble is very red this morning and has drasticaly deflated but still holds firm (think a small marble) I haven't touch it for fear it might pop. There is some content on the bottom inside the bubble that resembles an eye hence why I thought her eye fell in, or it could be a liquid. I can try to get pictures of it but I don't want the flash to startle her. Where the eye used to be has swelled and gone opaque, I can have water readings by 2pm today.

Thank you two so much, I'll slowly add the salt. I looked all the other fish over and they don't show signs of any bacteria/parasites so that's a good sign, don't want the bubble to get infected at all.

Oh Tam...Sorry to hear bouts your bubble eye. Sounds like it would hurt but maybe not if she's swimming about normally......
Sounds to me like you have it under control from what I am reading...I just wanted to drop in and say I hope she is doing better soon.....What a bummer it would be for your eye to fall...You will have to post back this afternoon after you get your water params and let us know how she is doing.....Good luck to you both....

It really would help to get a picture if at all possible. It is hard to envision what this looks like without a picture.

I'll check in this afternoon for your further post with the water readings.

My bubble eye broke his bubble quite drastically a few months back and the bubble sack did get quite red, but the redness disappeared in a couple of days and the bubble slowly inflated. It looked kind of puckered in places where the rips scarred over, but in time that has disappeared and you cannot tell where the damage was. However, the eye thing with your problem is very worrying.

Ok
Amonia is at 0
Nitrates are are 0
Nitirites are at 2-3 range, he said somewhere inbetween.
pH is 6.5

This was Zorro Saturday.


Then Sunday, present.




I glanced at her again and I *think* her eye is returning to it's normal state, I must have freaked out and thought it detatched completely. There is still a freightening amount of blood?/ puss whatever it is, in the bubble. The tank is salted slightly under .1%. Will this heal? She probally lost sight in her eye correct?

She's still swimming normally, eating and being herself, the fin rot has progressed rapidly though. I have Trisulfa, is it safe to use while her eye is in this condition?

EDIT: I should add there are no visible tears/cuts to the bubble. I'm really stumped at what could have happened. A ruptured blood vessle?

If it were me, I would wait 24 hours with the salt in the tank and see if it improves. If it is improving, I would give it a few days. When my bubble eye had a very red bubble, it improved on its own in two days.

It is hard to know what happens to the bubbles in these cases, but I think the tissue is very delicate and even rubbing on something can cause irritation or bleeding.

I think your readings were a typo, when you had nitrates at 0 and nitrites between 2-3. Were they the other way around?
Please keep me posted. Zorro is sure a cutie.

Oh oopsies, I didn't catch that. Yes they're the other way around. Thank you so much again for helping, I love her to death and it's painful to wake up and see her all red and swollen but it's comforting to hear it can heal. I'm sorry to hear your bubble eye went through the same thing, they are really delicate things.

I'll keep up on her improvements. Till then I think it's safe to say this thread is not 911 status any longer.

How does his bubble look today?

With an overstocked tank, I would work really hard on keeping your water quality top-notch. Do an extra water change per week and replace the salt that you remove.

If you have medicated food such as Medi-Gold or Metro-Med, you could feed that, as well. I wouldn't use the trisulphur unless things got really bad, since you don't want to compromise your cycle. That would only makes things worse.

I have seen some really nasty looking bubbles, and they can heal. Sometimes you will end up with a little, hard ball in the bottom of the bubble. My fancy goldfish book says that these remain, however, I have had them disappear, too and have the bubble return to absolute normal. I think that even the gravel in the tank can irritate the bubble when the fish is foraging on the bottom of the tank.

Please keep me posted.

The bubble is now peach, her eye swelling is lowering and there is still slight redness accumulating on the bottom of the bubble. Other than that she still comes to wiggle at me in the morning and eats.

I'll do a 25% water change today and take some of the rougher gravel out. Yeah, I agree about the Trisulfa, it treats for pop eye too so maybe when her bubble heals I'll try her out in a QT with 1/2 the minimum, that won't be for a while though.

Hi there, I have two bubbleEyes, that is all I have ever had. I had a Bubble Eye that got an infection in one of her bubbles. It got really blood shot first and then cloudy (inside the bubble). I tried all sorts of things, but the salt worked better than anything else. If the fluid inside your fishes bubble starts to clear up with the salt, it may kind of "dry" up and there will be a small "chunk" of stuff that will stay in the bubble.
And one idea of what could have happened to your fish, is that if there are a good size larger fish in the tank, they may have bumped or nibbled (sucked) or something like that to the bubble. Also it could have been hurt by the intake tube to your filter? I personally don't think the rough gravel did anything. If it was something rough or sharp, the bubble would have torn or punctured or there would be one specific spot that was worse than the rest.

good luck!
Keep us posted!
emily

Hm, now that you mention it, she does sometimes catch her tail in the intake (my guess on how the finrot started) but only once has her bubbles been caught. That was about 2 weeks ago though and she quickly pulled herself loose. That's certianly a possibility I over looked. People cover them with nylons so I've heard, it's a good idea.

Zorro's bubble is becoming cloudy and the contents are clotting. Here eye has yet to right itself correctly though. I can't get a good look unless I handel her, but from what I can glimps it's sort of sideways in a vertical position.

Once the bubble refills, the eye should go back into position, I would think

I use heater covers to cover the intake tube on my filters in the tank with bubble eyes. I posted it as a "tip" and it is featured in the "Tip of the Month" section if you want to take a look. It works great, and doesn't affect the intake of the filter.

Ooo, I shall check that out. Thank you.

How does the bubble look today?

I cut off a branch from a fake plant so it was one long stem with little plastic leaves on it. I stuck one end into the intake tube, and then wrapped it around and then stuck the other end in. (just another idea for a fix)
Here is a pic

Emily

Today it's more cloudy and opaque still, but looking better.

Morten that's a great idea too, but I don't have plastic plants unfortunantly.

I think that it is great that it is looking better. Keep up the good work, and please keep us posted. Pristene water will do the most good

Ah, new problem. Her whole bubble is missing, no pieces hanging off just completely gone. Did a 50% change and added a dash of salt. Like before she is eating and acting as if nothing has happened. There are no scars or open wounds. It's stumping me but I'm doing my best to keep everything pristine. At least she's not bleeding, no bubble is almost better than a bloody one?

I have never seen a bubble come completely off, but I have seen one that was so shrivelled and stuck to the head that it looked like it was gone. Eventually it did grow back. I would just wait and see and if the fish is still healthy and eating, I would just keep the water absolutely clean (as you are doing ), add the salt, and see what happens.

Please keep me posted and if it is at all possible to post a picture, I would really like to see it.

She is one puzzling fish. I've got school registration till 11am but I'll take a picture and post it here when I'm back.

Oh and too add, her eye is still somewhat turned down towards her gills and there is a very small almost silver ball between the eye (lid?) and her actual eye. I can see her eye but this ball is in the way almost keeping it from comming up.

Grr, ok I have to hunt down the charger but I'll get a picture up sooner or later.

A picture would be really good. It is hard to imagine what this looks like.

This is the best I could do, she was sleeping and pretty still otherwise she's swimming all over foraging for pellets.

Is it not possible that the buble just pushed out her eye? The other eye looks under pressure too and it looks as if the buble pushes it up, out of the eyesocket

Sheesh, that looks nasty. It looks like some kind of ulcer healing on the eye from the picture. Do you have any idea how she damaged her eye and bubble?

Also, do you see any regrowth of the bubble at all?

I think I might ask a few of the other mods to look at this. Maybe someone has some other ideas.

That looks exactly how Louie looked when he injured his eye.Never did figure out on what.The only thing that I could figure was one of the Filter intake tubes.They were spawning at the time,so that's a possibility too.I'm with touchofsky on this.The only thing I did was keep the water readings perfect so no secondary infection set in.If I'm not mistaken,I may have treated with a Little Melafix. Louie turned out fine of course,but his eye never did look the same.

Thanks, Devs, for your input. It is reassuring

Wow, this is sure an interesting problem! I have read through all the posts and in my opinion, at first it looked almost like he had popeye on the injured eye. I have had my fish bump into things (they are quite klutzy, especially if breeding!) and get a major popped-out eye like that. I had one injure his eye so badly that it swelled out and looked just like a celestial for a few weeks (just the one eye) and then as the swelling went down it went back to normal.

I have seen bubble eyes injure themselves a lot like that. When we get them in at work, the manager just dumps them into whatever tank is available, and some tanks have sharp rocks and decorations in them, and no intake protectors. More often than not though, the bubbles will return after an injury, though they may not be as big. I have also seen lots of bubble eye mutations where only one eye will be bubbled, or the eyes may lie unevenly.

Im wondering if the bubble just eventually popped due to the pressure inside. Or maybe it was just a coincidence that it popped, such as maybe he ran into something. Also, in such a crowded tank it makes sense that a fellow tankmate may have nipped at and injured him. When I was growing out my koi and shubunkin babies and they were crowded, I saw a lot of abnormal aggression among them as well as some injuries.

If it were me I would put him on a good antibiotic like Maracyn 2 or nitrofurazone (use a hospital tank, though–dont subject healthy fish to it). That should ward off any infection or hopefully cure one if there is one. Isolating the fish would be a good idea though because other goldies are often drawn to injuries and may just continue to peck at it and irritate it.

Good luck and keep us posted. Also thanks for the pics, they help out immensely! In the future another bubble eye owner might be helped by those.

Thanks a million everyone. Devs I'm with you, I really have no idea how this happened or what caused it. Well, now I'll put her in a QT and look for some Maracyn 2 and/or nitrofurazone/melafix. Glad to know it's nothing life threatening if it can be treated.

EDIT: Too add, there are no signs (that I can tell) of her bubble re-growing, will it stay this way or do you think eventualy a new bubble will fill in? It will be crammped quarters for the others untill December/January I'm afraid. The 5 of them are going into a 55 gallon then though, should I keep her seperated or is it big enough that she has room to mingle?

Casey, my bubble eye has lived with other fish (4 others) in a 66 gallon tank and I have never noticed anyone picking on him. This tank is heavily planted, too, so maybe that helps. As bubble eyes get larger, they become rather slow fish and tend to rest on the plants. I am going to change my 66 gallon over to an "all bubble eye tank". I just recently purchased 3 baby bubble eyes and they are in quarantine now . Now that Casey is getting so large, I just feel it would be better for him to be with other bubble eyes.


As for whether the bubble will regrow; as I mentioned before, Casey once tore his bubble very badly and it was plastered to the side of his head. I really didn't think it would regrow, but it looks perfectly normal now, although it did take quite a while for it to come back.

I hate to be a pest, but if you could get a picture of the bubble area, I could see if it looked like Casey's.

Ok, then I'll just have to but a lot more plants/make "safe" areas. No worries Touchofsky, I'll try to get a better picture.