If you own a fish tank, you will be aware of the freshwater fish diseases that very often occur and leads to epidemic death in your tank. However, it is very important to know the details and symptoms to identify which disease is spoiling the tank health before you use any medication.
Often fish can die due to the stress that comes upon by transport; do not mistake that as a disease. Therefore, it’s always advisable to have a small quarantine tank as the new home for your new fish – observe the fish here for few days and then you can transfer it to the real tank and avoid any contagious diseases.
Make sure you are following good fish acclimation techniques and do not hurry with this hobby. Sometimes, water quality is also a cause for such freshwater fish diseases. An aquarium test kit and tools can correct such issues. Hence, it is imperative for you to know what the common freshwater fish diseases are and how to identify them.
Common Fresh Water Fish Diseases:
Here are a few fresh water fish diseases and the symptoms by which you can identify them and realize its time to take them to a doctor:
One of the commonest diseases that the fishes get. The symptoms of this disease is a bloated fish, with standing scales, and there might be even some discoloring of the fish. However, this is less a disease than a syndrome caused by malnutrition and bacterial infection. You can try changing the water regularly and improve the food too. But if that does not work, do visit a doctor.
Ich or White Spots
As the name suggests, the symptoms of this is that there will be small white spots on your fish, mostly on the fins, but can be seen in the body too. This is a very common disease among the fishes, and your pet shop will probably have medications for this. This is mainly caused by poor water quality and you can raise the temperature of the tank which will prevent the recurrence of such disease.
A fish suffering from this symptom will be found scratching itself on some object. There will be some hanging thread like things on the body of the fish and there can also be signs of inflammation on the body. This is caused by other infected fish in the aquarium, generally. You can manually clean the fishes and put some iodine on the wounds. Also giving them sea water baths help them get rid of this disease.
The fish will have infected gills and skin, and there might be white spots too. But unlike Ich, there will be some eye spots too. Poor water quality and overcrowded aquarium might lead to this disease. This can be a serious problem, so before you offer medication to the fish, you must consult the doctor. Also change the water, so that the situation does not worsen. This might even lead to the death of your pet, so be careful.
There are several other diseases that are dangerous for your fish. So, if you own an aquarium, it is very important that you keep it properly clean so that your fish remains healthy.