So my little baby Kevin died. She was a rescue from PetSmart (they gave her to me) with severe swim bladder disease. When I got her in October, she was barely an inch long and couldn’t swim. I babied the hell out of her and she slowly made a recovery.

I’ve had her in a beautiful planted tank since and was actually planning to upgrade her to a 10g within the next few weeks. However, Friday night I noticed she had a bit of popeye. I did a 50% water change, dosed the tank with aquarium salt and some tannins, and turned the filter down. I ordered Kanaplex yesterday since I can’t find it in store near me and was waiting for it to arrive. She looked a bit worse yesterday so I gave her an Epsom salt bath, did another 25% water change, and hoped for the best.

She didn’t make it through the night. This morning I woke up at 6am to check if the meds were delivered and when I got up to check on her, she had passed. Was there anything else I could’ve done? I’m assuming she had lousy genetics and already had a weakened immune system (box store+swim bladder disease) but she went downhill really really fast. I attached a picture of her (alive and happy)

https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1qt1mzy

Posted by ContentMachine8950

1 Comment

  1. Could you post what your water parameters were?

    Ammonia –

    Nitrites –

    Nitrates –

    pH –

    Temperature –

    What did you feed and how often?

    Were her scales puffed out at all? (Dropsy) Hard to tell from that picture. But the first thing I did notice immediately is that she was very large.

    Overfeeding can lead to bloat, it can also lead to a multitude of internal issues that we often don’t realize are happening until it’s too late.

    A good rule of thumb is “their stomach is the size of their eyeball”.

    I’ve attached a visual to help.

    https://preview.redd.it/w16hkzqxnwgg1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fe48704ba571a9a0379cc9d9271ea81da26d0256

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