symptoms
external symptoms
- belly swollen
- bumps on the body
photos
Photo: Dirk Bender
Female Black Molly suspected of being pregnant
Photo: Daniela H.
Probably a pregnant zebrafish female. Pregnant zebrafish can become even fatter.
Photos: Mairii01 (Forum)
Red neon with a very big belly. This red neon is a borderline case. It may be a very fat, pregnant female, or it may be a sick animal. Spawn hardening is possible, for example. In the case of red neons, the suspicion of ascites is obvious. However, the fact that the scales do not look splayed speaks against ascites. In such cases, only close observation helps. If an animal has such a belly for a long time, but otherwise appears completely healthy, it is probably a female.
Photo: Dirk Bender
Thorn eye with a slightly thicker belly. The skin or scales are light, almost white in color. The animal was somewhat lethargic. Thorny eyes are susceptible to spawn hardening.
Photos: Harald Wolff
Dead crimson perch with a bloated belly
Photo: Niki Halanek
Veil fighting fish with bumps on the belly. After death, numerous water-containing cysts were noted.
Photo: Ralf Göstenmeier
Swordtail with a burst belly
Photos: Iris Maksutaj
An extremely fat guppy female. The female died shortly after the recordings. It is unclear whether it is ascites or a spawning problem, e.g. B. Spawn hardening acted.
Photos: Juergen Schmidt
Scalar with a very big belly. The 4 year old animal had this big belly for about 10 days. Treatment with high doses of nifurpirinol was unsuccessful. A day after the recordings, the stomach ripped open. The scalar was put to sleep.
Photo: Jutta (Forum)
Female Sumatran mullet with a big belly. Female Sumatran barbs that are ready to spawn can become quite fat. However, the belly of the female shown is a bit too big. Partially protruding scales indicate abdominal dropsy. The female had to be killed shortly after the picture was taken. It no longer swam away, grew thicker, breathing went very quickly and the lower abdomen turned yellowish. The abdomen was filled with a light yellow viscous secretion.
Photos: Thomas Stoeckheim
Scalar with swollen abdomen. The scalar mostly swam on its side and did not eat. The animal died a few days after the photos were taken. The exact cause can hardly be determined with such symptoms. Possibly the swollen abdomen and the difficulty in swimming indicate a bacterial infection with fluid accumulation in the abdomen and inflammation of the swim bladder. But constipation or spawn hardening cannot be completely ruled out either.
The cloudy and presumably blind eye may have been caused by predation by other angelfish a few weeks earlier.
Photo: Thomas Grimm
Marbled platy with what appears to be a swollen belly. Due to the many color forms, it is difficult to say whether the red or orange spots on the abdomen indicate a disease or belong to the color form. However, ornamental fish diseases with such yellow spots are apparently not known.
The animal shown was purchased with multiple platies 2 weeks prior to the shoot. One of those platies died. It is therefore not clear whether it is a healthy, pregnant female or whether the animal is sick. Appropriate information would be helpful.
Photos: Roland Miller
LDA 25 with a big belly. Like Otocinclus, pregnant LDA 25s can develop enormous bellies.
Photo: Jörg Günther
Neon tetra with a big belly. In the affected aquarium, fish of different species and with different symptoms kept dying within a week or two. A male cichlid first turned blue, then white, a catfish stopped eating and its stomach collapsed, a tiger barb tumbled in the water. In such cases, one can assume that such a fat belly also indicates a disease. Such courses of disease are often triggered by bacteria, often in connection with overstocking or insufficient water changes. Bacteria can then multiply and gradually attack the weaker fish.
Photos: Tilki Hümeyra
Big belly goldfish. It may be abdominal dropsy. The photos do not show what the exact shape of the stomach looks like and whether the scales are sticking out, so other causes are also possible.
causes
Fat bellies in fish can have various causes. In females of many species of fish, the abdomen swells greatly when they are pregnant. Livebearers, e.g. B. Black Mollies and Guppies. Zebrafish and cardinal fish can also become spherical when they are pregnant.
Another harmless cause of fat bellies is greedy gorging on food. Too much air can be taken in when greedily eating from the water surface. Neons, in particular, are notorious for clumsily swimming with big bellies and heads down after eating. In these cases, the abdomen is evenly inflated. For larger fish, e.g. B. frontosa, it was even observed that small blisters rose from the anus like gas.
The most well-known disease, in which the stomach of the diseased fish is evenly bloated, is the so-called ascites.
Externally, the effects of an intestinal rupture cannot be distinguished from abdominal dropsy. A ruptured bowel can B. occur when a fish is injured during capture. The mashed food then enters the body cavity through the crack and inflates the fish.
Another cause of swollen bellies can be intestinal flagellates. Rarely, swollen bellies are caused by spawn hardening. However, some fish species are known to cause spawning problems in the aquarium, e.g. B. Thorn eyes. Such animals need to be watched closely when the bellies appear to be getting fatter.
Uneven bulges on the fish body can be caused by obstruction, cysts, or internal tumors.
The exact cause of pathological thickening on the fish body can usually only be determined when the dead fish is dissected during a detailed examination.
The picture of the swordtail shows that the belly can swell so much that the belly literally bursts open. Within a few days, several fish of different species in an aquarium developed extremely large bellies. Swordtails in particular were affected, whose bellies literally burst open. The exact cause could not be determined, it was probably infectious abdominal dropsy.