Common Diseases in Tropical Fish And The Symptoms

Just like any other living creature, fish are receptive to diseases as well, especially to infections. Among these diseases, the most common are the infections produced by parasites like flukes, bacteria, ich, saprolegnia, chilodonella and argulus.
Here is a list of these fish illness that can happen to fish that live in aquariums, along with a short description of these diseases.

1. Fish Lice

Some of the largest parasites in the animal world are the fish lice. Their scientific name is argulus, and they can grow up to one centimeter. Unlike other parasitical forms, these parasites are easy to detect because they can be seen with eyes opened, if you do an inspection of the fish’s body. They appear along the whole body but they can be found especially in the fins area. Be careful if you want to detect them. At first site, if the lice aren’t moving, they appear as harmless dark spots. Another clue in discovering if your fish has lice is the fact that the lice make the fish agitated and he can move his body a lot.

These types of parasites are dangerous to the fish because they have the ability to suck the fluids out of it by sticking their proboscis like mouth to the fish’s small body.

2. Bacterial Diseases

Among the nastiest diseases a fish can have, the ones produces by pathogenic bacteria are the most common cause of problems for fish breeders. This is because the bacteria can attack the fish internally, entering the body through the mouth, or externally, attacking the skin. The bacteria infections are many times deadly, attacking the internal organs and causing death.

The two most common bacterial threats are the bacterial gill and the fin rot disease. These two attack the fins and the gills and they can easily infect the whole body and become a systemic infection. A well known fish specie that is known to get easily infected with bacteria is the koi fish.
Besides that, it is good to know that in many cases, the bacterial infections appear to be just some red spots on the fish’s skin, ulcerous marks or irritation of the fish skin.

3. Flukes in Fish

Diseases are mostly produced by parasites and bacteria that grow to a large number. The flukes, for example, are harmless parasites if they are in small numbers but when their number reaches a certain limit, they are fatal. The flukes are relatively small. They grow to about 2 mm in length, and quite invisible to the naked eye.
They are dangerous because they can suck the fluids of the fish host and cause them death. The flukes are parasites that needs only one fish host to complete his lifecycle and this is why many flukes attach to a fish and stay with him till the fish is dead.

The flukes have hooks with which they attach themselves to the body of the fish and they are considered, by specialists, to be the very difficult to treat. The problem is that the treatment is with malachite and formalin but given in high dosage that can sometimes cause negative side effects for the sick fish.

4. Ich

This type of parasite can infect the fish body and stay there for the rest of the fish life without causing any symptom. This happens because the natural defense of the fish body keeps everything under control. The common name of this disease is ich, costia or sometimes ichthyobodo. They only do harm when the fish’s immunity is low. If the fish has another disease, his defense is low and the ich parasites begin to multiply in a fast rate. If a fish has too many ich, you will see that they cover its body and the fish isolates himself from the others. In many cases, in this stage, the illness proves to be fatal for the fish.