Treating Pinecone Disease (Dropsy) in Blood Parrot Cichlids
📝 Summary
Pinecone disease, or dropsy, is a highly contagious bacterial illness in blood parrot cichlids with under a 50% cure rate and often fatal within days. Isolate the sick fish at once and treat with salt-and-baking-soda or antibiotic baths, adding medicated food for severe cases, while keeping water clean and temperature stable to prevent it.
1 Cause and Symptoms
Cause: dropsy is bacterial, favored by dirty water, wounds on the body, low oxygen, and high tank temperature; clinically the cure rate is below 50% and it is extremely contagious.
Symptoms: early on the fish darkens, with black spots and lines, the body looks rough and swollen, and some scales flare outward like a pinecone while the scale bases swell with a clear fluid. In late stages all scales stand erect, fin bases congest, and clear fluid sits between the fin membranes; pressing the body squirts fluid from the scale bases and scales fall off. The fish also breathes hard, swims slowly, and may flip belly-up, dying within 2 to 3 days.
2 Treatment
First isolate the sick fish, because dropsy spreads very easily. Then bathe it in a mix of 3% salt water and 3% baking-soda water, or in a solution of nitrofurazone powder and gentamicin, once in the morning and once in the evening for about 10 minutes each time.
For severe cases, during the above treatment also feed a medicated diet of oxytetracycline at 30 mg per kg of fish, once daily for a week; note that you should withhold food for 2 days first to empty the gut before medicated feeding. To prevent dropsy, keep the tank water clean at all times, strictly control temperature differences within 2 C, and watch the fish daily so you treat abnormalities promptly.
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