Larry (Lobster) still hasn't eaten. Tomorrow will be day #11 w/out food.
I've tried hikari bio gold pellets, aqua culture pellets, crushed algae wafer, frozen blood worms, freeze dried blood worms, daphnia (Frozen & freeze dried) and cooked peas.

THEN tonight I went and got a whole buttload of live blackworms (which, by the way are TOTALLY :gross: - BAAAAAH!!) and put a couple of them in his tank. He swam away when they got close to him, so I decided it was water changing time - so I dropped a few of them into his solo cup while he waited to go back in his little tank. Once again he cowered in the top of the cup while the worms wriggled around on the bottom of the cup.

He's been on maracyn 2 for about 8 days now, and I have had him in IAL water since the second or third day. He's got a pinch of salt in there now too.

I even bought him one of those bright fluorescent little holey caves at WM the other day and gave that to him so he could lay inside it w/out having to lay on the gravel. So... at the moment, that's where he is. Back in his little tank laying on the bottom of the little cave.

He's totally pale - and he lays around a lot. What's weird is that he's pretty responsive to me - he swims away when/if I scare him by accident and when i just sit and watch him, he makes a lap or two around the tank every now and then. In other words, it doesn't seem like he's getting sicker or any weaker than he has been all along.

Anyone have any suggestions for me? I'm at my wits end. By this stage of the game, a fish has either started making some progress for me or has seriously gotten worse. I REFUSE to watch this fish die from starvation when there might have been something else I could try.

Thx.

they can go for days/weeks without food, cant they? He'll come round, u sound like u know what ur doing

Yeah, they can go for quite a while w/out food - you're right.
I just wish he'd start eating and swimming around soon.

It really bothers me when I can't figure out what's wrong with them and there's not much I can do but sit and stare in at them. Aaah well, I'll keep trying what I can with him.

Can you post a picture of him please? :)

Hmmmm....i hate it when they wont eat.. it seems like you've tried everything...I don't know what else, try a cucumber maybe... hopefully he'll eat, hope he's not eating due to being sick.

Yeah, I just lost my little white plakat that I KNEW was sick. He didn't eat for a week, was very emaciated and I think he could have been partially blind. It's so rough when they're that sick that they're just starving themselves... I hate it when they just decide. It's like nothing you can do will bring them back... I'm hoping one of these days, Larry will see the light. Good luck, Jen...

RIP White Plakat

Could it possibly be the bacteria is resistant to the Maracyn 2 or is a type of bacteria that the Maracyn 2 doesn't work for (gram positive vs gram negative)? I could have missed this, but why is he on antibiotics right now to begin with?

one thing that i have tried with much success with fish not eating is liquid vitamins. it not only gets into the fish's system from taking in the tank water but it also seems to kick start their appetite. you might want to try that.

i would try the c. silver instead of the maracyn especially if you don't know what is wrong with him. like gufyduck pointed out unless you know if the infection is gram negative or positive it might not be working.

I did a Google, not much came up. Most said its the settling in thing, but Betta Talk (I think) mentioned BettaMax.

okay - here's a picture of Larry...

That's how he looked when I got him, then he colored up a little bit once he got into clean water and turned red, so I know he's supposed to be red. He's once again gone to that pale color that he is in the picture above.

Saucy that sucks that he's gone. :(

gufy - he's on m2 because he was very ill when I first brought him home. I hand pick sickies to drag home and try to nurse back to health. I gave him a few days to come around on his own with just some clean water and colloidal, but he didn't improve, so I guessed (much like I always have to do) about what he might have... he was breathing pretty heavy and was very pale and not eating - so I decided to give M2 a try. It's supposed to help fish that won't eat get their appetites back, and it also treats gill disease and kicks a lot of internal infections so I decided to try it.

semper - I always use 500 ppm colloidal in all my sick fishy tanks... sorry I forgot to mention that, so he is getting that... but it was my feeling that he needed to be medicated too. I just need to figure out what he has. I might pick up some of that maracyn plus that justhal mentioned. It is supposed to be a combo of maracyn and maracyn 2 - cover everything I guess.

For the vitamins you mentioned - are these something that you actually got for fish? Or did you get them somewhere else? I I am going to try to find some liquid fry food today when I got out at lunch - see if that helps. I might also pick up some of these vitamins too..

Maybe he has fish TB? Sometimes fish with TB will stop eating or become extremely fussy eaters (like my Valoel). I could be completely wrong about that, but he way his fins look kinda shriveled in that pic remind me of the way Valoel's fins started looking when his case became more advanced...

Oooh ick. Really?
What other symptoms would he have?

He's still hanging in there.
I literally laid a bloodworm across his snout a while ago and he didn't even move.

He's now laying on his plant, and when he takes a breath, he spits out a bubble. It looks somewhat like he's been making a bubblenest but I'm sure it's just because he spits air back out.

I wasn't able to find him any maracyn plus today, but i'm going in search again tomorrow.

From what I remember, symptoms of fish tb are the fish is literally wasting away. Their head looks like it is too big for their body or they are a swimming skeleton. Sometimes their spines also bend, almost into a "s" shape. They can develop ulcers, which can also look like their scales are falling off. I have lost one fish to fish TB, and he did become very lethargic and refuse to eat, even when I bribed him with his favorites right infront of his face.

I have some links bookmarked on *my* computer, but I won't be able to get online with it until this weekend.

Hmm.
Well, he doesn't have any ulcers or sores, no fungus, no anything on him.
His body looks perfect - and his spine isn't bent.
I think his fins are just pretty clamped up because he isn't feeling good - he still swims around now and then. For being now on day #13 with no food, he really seems to not be wasting away. He does look somewhat skinny, but not to the point where if I saw him I would ever suspect that he's not been eating.

I'm going at lunch again today to see if I can find SOMEthing to get into him.

i HATE this.

I would consider whether he might have internal parasites. It can happen, and can be difficult to diagnose.

The drug of choice for internal parasites is metronidazole. If you know a vet who could sell you some, cool. It's also called flagyl.

OR you can pick up some 'Hex-A-Mit' OR 'Hole in the Head Guard' at the fish store - they contain metronidazole.

And from what I've read, using a little Epsom Salts helps uptake the medication - ideally, you want fish to take metronidazole internally, but it won't happen if they won't eat. You dose it one day, skip a day, then do a water change and dose again.

I'd seriously consider it...

bm - the vitamins are fish vitamins. i used to buy them online for the cichlids. i used them when i was medicating them and they weren't eating and for holding females.

http://www.bettaresource.com/diseasesmedications.php

N2MB - I clicked on that link and almost right away it hit me. I bet he has Bacterial Gill Disease. I have done some more digging, and that's exactly how he's acting.

I also have a feeling it's a combo of that plus systemic bacterial disease.

A prescribed med for both of those is tetracycline.
I'm going to give it a try. He can't get much worse, I figure.
And I can't just let him die.

Thanks for all the help guys.
I'll keep ya posted.

:?: Just a thought..... but what about creating a post that we can send links to.... about fish diseases. Also can post company contact numbers... like in the case of Mardel/ Virbac they have an 800 number where you can find out about drug interations.

Having a place where we have links listed... so we can click through them and figure it out would be really helpful :hmm: ... and time saving. Most of the time... discribing is a challenge... ya just gotta look at a list till it jumps out at ya.... then the lightbulb goes off followed by repeatedly :banghead:

Sounds like a good idea to me. I'm all for anything that will help the fish.

Day #14 came and went. He still hasn't eaten one bite.
I think little Larry's on his last fin.
He's tipping over, and I think I can see faint signs of pineconing on the backend part of his body. VERY odd, considering that his belly isn't swolledn at all.
He's also for the most part pretty incoherent now and just floats at the top or sinks down to the bottom.

Aaaah well - I'm somewhat hoping he's gone when I wake up just so the suffering is over. :(

Caught this thread late. It sounds like dropsy if he's pineconeing, mabe a different kind? Try an epsom salt bath, BM. It is a last resort but what could it hurt now?

edited to add, also I would pop in some ich meds, as that is how I perked up my Jenga who was just laying there all day not eating. Maybe there is some sort of parasitic stuff going on.

Day 16 is here and he's still hanging on.
He's now getting tetracycline - I used my last 1/4 tab to mix up his water for yesterday's dose, so I have to go pick up some more today.

He looks so pale and gray, and he just hangs there near the top of the water.
The heavy breathing seems like it's kinda calmed down a little bit, so i'm not sure if the tetracycline is maybe working, and it was a bacterial gill problem, or what.
Just sits up on top of his little plant like a little zombie. He does turn his eyeballs to look at me when I go to talk to him but he doesn't move.

Well, I guess as long as there's another day or another thing I can try for him I will... If he had decided it was his time to go, he'd have given up a long time ago. I just can't believe he's still hanging in there.

Little Larry finally gave up sometime within the past couple of hours.
I shut the light off in there to give him some peace and when I went back he was gone.

At least he isn't suffering anymore.
Doesn't make it any easier though.

I'm sorry bettamomma. You did everything you could think of for him, and I believe that if it weren't for your care, he would have died within in a few days in that pathetic little cup. I'm sure he would thank you if he could. Hang in there. :hug: