I’ve had Captain Mandarin Orangalot since September 15, 2008. I call him “Orange". He’s a spunky fish who likes to look down his “nose” at you. Full of attitude and a huge appetite, he lived the first year and a half of his life without major incident. … Minus the time he inhaled an entire corn kernel and couldn’t chew it or spit it back out. But that’s another story…

I think that his good health mostly has to do with the way I treat him. I never handle him with my hands, unless he gets food or rocks stuck in his mouth. I do regular water changes – I try for once a week, but sometimes it’s once every two weeks. I never have put him into a tank that hasn’t been cycled. The less you handle them, and the less you mess with their tank water (with the exception of the mandatory water change which includes dechlorifying the new water and adding appropriate amount of aquarium salt), the healthier your fish will be.

But that doesn’t mean they will always be healthy. In January I moved him from a 10 gallon tank to a 75 gallon tank – quite the upgrade. Throughout the past six months, we have added fish to the tank that we have had in other 10 gallon tanks. (I have never put a fish into the 75 gallon tank directly from the pet store.) But even with the careful cycling of fish and the tank, sickness developed.

Orange was the only one affected by this sickness. I noticed he was becoming more and more lethargic. After a couple of days, his stomach started to bloat up. I became concerned, and placed him into a designated sick tank that had been kept cycled by a pleco.

When I put Orange into the tank, I did a 50% water change and began to heat the tank to 80 degrees. I kept the pleco in there because he was a relatively new addition to the fishy family and I didn’t want to stress him out too much. So I started treating the tank using Jungle Fungus Eliminator, which supposedly helps with red streaks in fins (which he always has had) and swim bladder disease. The treatment is supposed to last for four days before you either finish treatment or do another water change and add more.

Two days after I started treatment, he got worse. He bloated up more, his tail fin was clamped to the side, and he was breathing very heavily. He wasn’t eating and wasn’t moving very much. I put the carbon filter back into the tank to get the chemicals out to try a different medicine.

I set up some more water in anticipation of another water change. We always put water into a large plastic container and allow it to sit for about 24 hours to allow the water to become room temperature and for chlorine to evaporate. We also use instant dechlorinizing chemicals to remove chlorine from the water.

I waited until the next morning. When I got up, he was even worse – he had dropsy. His scales were sticking out like a pine cone. I was incredibly worried that he wasn’t going to make it.

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How I Saved My Fish from Dropsy

What I used

Epsom Salt
Jungle Fungus Clear

First thing I did was took out the pleco and placed him into another 10 gallon tank. I did a 50% water change and added 1/4 tsp of epsom salt.

As I was in the middle of my water change, I was looking up information online on how to cure dropsy. I stumbled upon a person’s blog (which unfortunately I don’t have a link to) who stated that he was able to keep his fish from dying of dropsy by cleaning out EVERYTHING in the tank.

So I began the process of cleaning my tank out. I took out the plastic plants and gave them a thorough cleaning using only my fingers and running water. I took out a couple handfuls of gravel at a time, keeping as much water in the tank as possible, and poured the gravel into a small bowl. I rinsed the gravel using running water and spinning the gravel around with my hand, placing it into a larger bowl. Then I would take out another couple handfuls of the gravel and repeated the process. I took out the gravel slowly because I was trying my best to not stress out my fish. I could see already that the epsom salt was helping alleviate some of the dropsy.

I took out about 98% of the gravel, and waited about 5 minutes for all the poop and misc shit to settle. Once it was settled to the bottom of the tank, I used my gravel cleaner to suction out every piece of shit out that I could. I returned the gravel to the tank small handfuls at a time, then put the plants back in. I topped off the water in the tank, added a pinch of epsom salt to make up for the water loss, waited about two hours so the remaining medicine could be cleaned through the carbon filter, took the filter out, and dropped in a tablet of the Jungle Fungus Clear.

I stopped feeding Orange regular goldfish food, instead feeding him peas.

The next morning when I woke up, I cleaned the gravel thoroughly of any poop and left over peas that was in the water. There was very translucent poop hanging off the plants, so I removed the plants from the tank and cleaned them off. I returned the plants, topped the tank off again. Continued feeding him peas.

On the third day, I did no water change. I continued to feed him peas.

On the fourth day, I did another 50% water change (always having water set-up the night before), thoroughly suctioning the gravel, cleaned off the plants again, added another 1/8 tsp of epsom salt, and still fed him peas.

By the fifth day, I saw significant change in my fish. He was swimming around, had an appetite, and was acting more like a fish. The dropsy was gone, though his belly was still a bit bloated. By the sixth day the bloating was going down still.

Knowing by then that he had a bacterial infection, I bought Medigold, which is an antibacterial goldfish food. When I finished up the second dose, I did another 50% water change and placed the filter back into the tank. I fed my fish for 10 days on the Medigold, and he seemed super fine.

Of course, once a fish gets sick, he becomes very susceptible to other sickness. It’s been a month since he has had dropsy, and he seems to be doing fine minus a small parasite issue that he now has. I’m in the process of trying to cure him from anchor worm, which may lead to another post on how to clear that up. We’ll see how it works.

But as of now, minus the parasite issue, Orange is a perfectly fishy fish. He’s swimming around just fine, and is acting pretty normal.

So, in case you don’t want to read all that, here’s a summary of how I cured my fish of dropsy:

Day 1
1. Noticed Dropsy. Removed all non-sick fish from sick tank.
2. 50% water change
3. Added 1/4 tsp epsom salt
4. Cleaned 98% of gravel, clean plastic plants
5. Wait for shit to settle, sucked out the shit at bottom of tank
6. Put gravel back in a little at a time
7. Filled the tank back up
8. Put a pinch of epson back in to make up for water loss.
9. Waited two hours. Took out filter, put in Jungle Fungus Clear
10. Fed peas.

Day 2
1. Filtered out waste and left over food.
2. Fill tank back up with new water.
3. Cleaned plants that had poop hanging on it.
4. Fed peas.

Day 3
1. No water change.
2. Fed peas.

Day 4
1. 50% water change.
2. Cleaned plants.
3. Added second dose of medicine.
4. Added 1/8 tsp epsom salt.

Day 5
1. BETTER!! :O!!
2. Siphon out left over food/poop.
3. Add fresh water.
4. Fed peas.

Day 6
1. EVEN BETTER.

Day 8
1. 50% water change
2. Placed carbon filter back in.