Sick Apisto

If it is still eating and/or will eat it, you can start by using antiobiotic food pellets. They sell them at PetSmart, I think by Jungle labs. You may also try to use erythromycin and keep the tank at around 80 degrees. It will be dificult to know the cause of the symptoms but it sounds like a bacterial infection that has reached septicemia stage. Have you had this fish for a while? Has it recently been in any altercations with tank mates?

You may also want to do a search for Apisto specific diseases.

Good Luck, when infection reaches this stage it is very dificult to cure.

I have had the little guy for nearly a year. I haven't noticed it fighting anything although he does make runs at some of the other apistos. I think he is a dominant fish.

I noticed the cloudy eye a weeks ago and thought it would go away, but it spread quite a bit.

He is still very feisty and eats a lot.

I'll go get some jungle labs food and try find some erythomycin (any idea where to get this?).

Sorry yeah erythromycin is Maracyn from API I believe. Check out the box and it should be around 200mg per packet or something. PetSmart always has this stuff. Remember that it could have a negative affect on the bacteria (kills the good and the bad) in your hospital tank so monitor your ammonia and nitrites. Also search the forums cause I have actually also heard of people putting neosporin on infected injuries, this might help too. I have never done it but I have read about it.

Again, also search for specific eye diseases so that you might be able to take a couple of treatment routes.

Glad to hear he is feisty and eating though. You're already ahead of the game.

I have started dosing T.C. Tetracycline by aquarium pharmaceuticals.

I also bought gel-tek edible tetracycline.

Think it might be helpful to use both at the same time? It is the same medication just one treats internally via ingestion and the other externally.

You might also want to check PH of your tank.
Sometimes too acid water can cause pop eyes.

pH is 7.2 according to my pH probe.

Though I haven't calibrated it in about a year and a half so it might be a bit off... thanks for the info!

My fish seems to have calmed down, when I first added the medication it freaked out a bit and kept trying to swim behind the plastic lip of the HOB filter at the top of the tank. Now he is calmly swimming around the bottom of the tank.

I may be mistaken, but the infection seems to be a little better today. His eye looks clearer and the places that were filled with white seem to have cleared out a bit. The underlying tissue seems red (like small cuts). So I suspect this means the bacteria is dying off and exposing the veins underneath.

Too early to tell at this point, but he seems much calmer and a bit better. I might try feed him the edible tetracycline today (he didn't show interest yesterday when he was freaking out).

Anyone had experience with this disease?

Spoke with a vet the other day and he said tetracycline was a good choice since it had a broader spectrum than penicillin or erythromycin.

He said to keep treating for roughly 4 days after all symptoms disappeared.

The fish looks a little better, it seems like his eye has popped back into the socket and he can move it around a bit versus before when it was too swollen/white to move independently.

I fed him some bloodworms last night as well (he hadn’t been fed for 2 days before that) and he went nuts for them. Pretty much a solo feeding frenzy.

The water is a reddish color from the medicine, I’ll be doing a 25% water change tonight to even things up a bit.

You can also try melafix

Not sure, but it doesn't seem to be too much better. Just a tad.

I bought some Maracyn Two Fish Antibiotic Medication. Hopefully this will solve the problem...

Might want to get an antiparasitic while you're at it. I've noticed that often one thing leads to another once the fish are pretty far-gone.

Hmm ok, I'll look into that or at least keep an eye out for parasites. He is still eating very well and is otherwise frisky so hopefully I won't need to treat for parasites :/

I think when I take him back home, I'm going to separate all the apistos/cichlids. I'll put the veijitas with my angels in the 125g. The other apistos will get a 10g tank

Ok well the TC and didn't seem to help, I started dosing metronidazole as well as TC.

The infection or whatever it is hasn't slowed down and it seems to have eaten away a good portion of its head and around the right eye socket.

Now he tries to eat but his mouth seems to be locked open and he can't close it around the food even though he goes after it and sometimes gets it in his mouth (but spits it out again).

At this point I don't know what to do and I think hes probably going to die...

I'm still doing 60-90% water changes every 3 days.

Do you think using these two medications together might me causing the locked jaw or do you think that is from the progressed disease?

Zapins,

I hate to say this but I truly feel that it is time to euthanize this animal. That amount of tissue damage will not heal and if he can't eat then he will just starve to death. I am sorry to hear that he did not continue to get better but IMO it is time to cut HIS losses.

Well... jmontee you were right. I should have euthanized him but I just didn't want to see him die... Somehow I thought he might pull a miraculous recovery and be fine.

he died at roughly 1:30 am today

I'm very sorry to hear the bad news. Cichlids are always hard to lose since they actually have personality! For future reference, though, erythromycin (Maracyn I by Mardel or EM Tabs by API) would have been a considerably better choice. Tetracycline is broad spectrum, but pop eye is almost always gram positive, which erythromycin is more specific for. Also, tetracycline degrades rapidly with exposure to light, actually making it MORE toxic. Metronidazole and Maracyn Two (minocycline) are virtually useless against pop eye, and using the combination at once will do little butbquickly destroy the fish's liver and kidneys. please just keep all this in mind in case you see any future symptoms...

Thanks for your input... I didn't have a lot to go on since the internet is full of "miracle cures" and recommendations. I tried calling a vet but he wanted 50$ to look at the fish never mind treatment.

In retrospect maybe it would have been better to go to the vet, but I don't know.

Thanks for the info and I will use that combo next time (I actually had both maracyn and mardel) I used tetracycline since it is broad spectrum and I didn't know what type of bacteria I had.

In retrospect I think it might have been a fungus since near the end I noticed little white strands coming out from between his body scales near his side fins as well as near the head. The body became overgrown with fungus or possibly bacteria a few hours after death. I am not sure what exactly he had, perhaps this description helps a bit?

$50 is cheap for taking a fish to a vet. there are about 0 vets that would even look at a fish.