Gerald Bassleer examines a Borneo sucker with advanced tail rot caused by Flexibacter columnaris bacteria, not fungus. He recommends antibiotics like neomycin sulfate or enrofloxacin, improved water quality, and euthanasia for severely affected fish.
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Dear Aquarist, I'm happy that you joined me for my case on fish diseases. And I had already 97 and today it will be 98. And of course, as usual, I share you my PowerPoints where I show you my foundings, my findings on a particular disease on a very pretty ornamental aquarium fish, which is the Balfortia laverte, which has tail rot. The po la is the Borneo sucker coming from a particular area in Indonesia. And this fish like here I show in the video you can see the damaged tail and you see the whitish part at the end of the body, it's getting wide. The tail is rotting away. You also see it here and hanging here you see this tail is also rotten off. So several of those boforia had this kind of problem. Here I show it again. Here we show it in a photograph. You see the fortia here the tail has gone. It is white itself. Most of the people diagnose this correctly, they will maybe say, well that's a fungus, it's a fungal infection. Well, this is the white necrotic tissue typical for an advanced tail rod caused by bacteria. Of course, fungus might appear in a later stage. Here we see again the tail light here at the base of the tail and the rotten tail itself. And we take an examination to see if we can any find any parasites maybe that might have been caused. But we only find necrotic tissue of the tail. Here it is all necrotic tissue of the tail is here stripes below you, so you hardly see parts of the tail that is left. It's all necrotic tissue. And if you look with the video, we see the many different kinds of bacteria moving in in the water. Small pointed bacteria and small filamented bacteria are all moving around in the skin scraping. And here we see it in a higher magnification. You see this high motile bacteria. And we also can see here in the necrotic tissue all colonies of Flexibacter columnaris or Chondrococcus columnaris. It's a typical bacterial infection that evolves very fast. And it looks like tubifex worms all sitting clustered together, very tiny bacteria moving bacteria which make in these clusters. And it looks like tubifex balls. So that's how you can recognize. So we can see there are different kinds of bacteria involved in this fish tail rod. So it's not one kind of bacteria. So that might be sometimes difficult to find the appropriate antibiotic. So you might have to use a broad spectrum treatment or an etiquette that can be defined depending on the type of bacteria and how there is a reaction of the antibiotic. A laboratory of toss can help you the determinant to do a sensitivity testing. But that costs money and it costs time. So you want to treat as soon as possible. Also the gills are badly affected. You see a lot of lamella here are completely devoid rotten away. So that is an advanced bacterial infection also causing this kind of bracha or gill damage. So the treatment is well, we recommend that you start treating as soon as possible with an antibiotic that you have to ask your fish doctor which is appropriate. You can also use a treatment available in your pet store that controls bacterial infections such as Veromore from aquarium unster. In many of my cases I examined and treated I used combination of salt and neomycin because salt helps to slow down the bacterial infection. And the neomycin sulfate is a good antibiotic that handles to skin infections and tail infections. So also sometimes Nifeir, Pylenol or Furan drugs can be helpful. Or embrofloxacine medications like Bitril. So many medications are available. But ask your fish doctor of course. First of all, you have to make sure that the conditions are okay. The good water is there, good filtration, proper quality of fish care. And you can help with a fish food that helps the fish to recover much faster and to become more in a defense mode with his immune system. I recommend therefore, Dr. Basler Biff his food forte or the Fuko. The badly damaged fish, of course they are dying and when they're badly affected, it's too late to treat. And we recommend that you put them asleep with a tranquilizer like Narcomore plus from a corded Mr. So I hope this video helped you. You can stay in touch through my Patreon channel where you can get an appropriate training on fish diseases. So again today I was a consultant for you and for the fish health for your fish. So you can take better care. Good luck in your work of caring for your fish.
