Gerald Bassleer examines a black swordtail with severe bacterial infection: rotted dorsal fin, necrotic tissue, destroyed gill lamellae, and damaged spleen and kidneys. The cause is bacterial overgrowth from poor conditioning. Treatment requires water changes, filter cleaning, antibacterial medication, and medicated food.
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Hello. Today, our fish disease, case number 26. It's about the black swordtail, Xiphophorus Hilary, which had a bacterial infection. And as I show you here on the picture, well, the black swordtails had a bad dorsal fin with some fin rot, necrosis. You see already also the red bleeding part on these two parts of the swordtail. Well, the black swordtail, the fin rod. We could take samples of the fin. We could see here necrotic tissue, bacterial colonies here. It's a massive bacteria. If you go to high magnification, you see all those tiny spots. But you could see the necrotic tissue affecting the fin. And we took the scale so you could see the massive loading of the bacterial colonies. All those black smears. This is a pathological view. Here we see the scale not covered with the bacterial colonies. But here there are so many, you can hardly see the scale anymore. Well, this is a typical sign of a massive bacterial colony. On the scale of this black swordtail. And we checked the gills, we saw particularly this bad bacterial gill rotation. You see the gill lamellae are completely eaten away, absorbed by the bacteria. So the fish got a real severe bacterial infection in the gills, which eventually will be the cause of the death or the dying of those sore tails. Even the internal organs we examined and we saw here the spleen with a lot of melanomachrofaric centers. You can see all those dark areas here. There is not much healthy organ left anymore, particularly on the spleen. So the fish will have a bad functioning system. The kidney, same thing. Black tubuli, also kind of melanomic fark centers here below. So this organ, the kidneys, are not working, the spleen is not working. Well, we could determine that this was most likely a bacterial infection, according to our findings. Of course, we can send the fish to a laboratory. But I'll tell you again, this is expensive for many people. It's time consuming. And the thing we want to do is try to give as soon as possible an adequate treatment. And that's what I'm trying to give in these videos here. But the origin is usually in this case, poor conditioning of the fish, weakened fish immune system. That fails. Could be after transport, overcrowding, many reasons. The first thing I always recommend in a case like you do, good water change and a filter cleaning, particularly when the first signs appear. The dorsals are getting reddish, the fin is rotting away. Well, do a good water change and a filter cleaning. That helps a lot the system because you eliminate a lot of bad bacteria which are circulating in the water. Try to treat with an antibacterial medication, which you can get from many shops. For instance, we can recommend Vitamore from a cornea Munster, which is a good disinfectant for cleaning the bacteria from skin and fish and fins. Try also to feed with our Dr. Besley or biotrax with Foucault or aloe vera or the professional treat. Some feed we recommend in taking good care. Next to the medication, it's a combined treatment. So this was My case number 26 and more cases to come in the coming weeks. Thank you for staying tuned.
