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You are here: Experts > Animals/Pets > Pet Fish > Pond & Water Gardening > Sick shabumpkin
Expert: Jonathan Cauble - 10/24/2009
Question
I have a sick shabumpkin and was wondering if you could tell me what is wrong with it and if it is treatable. The fish is about 5" long. I have attached a picture of the fish, but basically it's right hand scales over the gill seems to be protruding and there looks like there is some infection of the gill itself. The fish behaves and feeds quite normally. It is in a large garden pond (12000 gallons) which I have renovated this summer. I now have a vortex, sieve and protein skimmer tower for filtration and all tests on the water are OK. There are about 50 other small fish about this size, and also 2 medium (8"-10") Koi and 4 large (20") Koi in the pond, so it is well understocked. I first noticed this problem about a month ago and none of the other fish seem to be infected. Part of the problem is that it will be very difficult to catch in such a large pond!
Rick
Answer
From what I can tell, it looks as if the fish's entire gill cover is missing. The gills are typically supposed to be about the same color/pattern as the rest of the fish's body. The inflammation could either be from where the fish experienced some sort of trauma or it could still be infected. It could have started off as a fungal or parasitic infection, but there looks to be a primary or at least secondary bacterial infection. Make sure you have a proper amount of salt in the pond. That's the best you can do for now unless your able to catch the fish. You can use some wound sealant in that case.
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