Please HELP me PUNK!

Question

Please help me Punk has swimbladder and I don't know what I am doing wrong at all I love Punk and don't want him to ever die but I feel like he is. He was fine yesterday and then at night all I fed him was a couple blood worms I don't know what happened and I don't know what to do! PLEASE HELP!

He is in a 20 gallon and I tried feeding a pea but it just floats to the bottom and he can't get it!!

Answer 1

Get a bottle of swimbladder treatment and aquarium salts from the pet shop!!! Its his only chance.

Answer 2

Make sure your hands are clean and hold it in place for him.  Or just wait a little while and try again. In the future pre-soak your food in some tank water for a few minutes because air can get inside your fish when they feed at the surface and affect the swimbladder. Also pellets have air pockets in them that can also affect your fish.  

Answer 3

Are you sure it is swim bladder and not constipation? Swim bladder may look bad, but as long as the fish can function, he will live a full life.

Constipation however, is caused from over feeding or an unvaried diet and can be quickly remidied.

In very deperate cases of constipation, (such as yours where it is difficult for the fish to function) one can carefully catch the fish and administer one or two drops of cod liver oil in the fish's mouth. This is a very powerful laxitive. Before taking this extreme treatment, I would check the following:

- Have you fasted him for several days? Sometimes not eating will allow his system to clear. Fish can go up to a week with no food.

-Try feeding by hand a mashed pea or a single grain of epsom salt

-Avoid dried food for a while (use primarily live, frozen, and roughage such as romaine lettuce, blood worms, night crawlers, cucumber, oranges, peas, ect.)

Swim bladder will not kill your fish, it will simply diminish his quality of live. Constipation and over feeding however, will cause damage.

Answer 4

Here are some methods used....

1. Feed your fish a couple of peas. That's right, peas. Just get some frozen peas, thaw them, and feed them to your fish. A professor of fish medicine at N.C. State College of Veterinary Medicine has done this in several cases with very good results. He thinks that the peas somehow encourage destruction of the impaction. No hard scientific data yet, but it's worth a try

2. Fast your fish for a couple of days. Withhold all food for three or four days, and sometimes this alone will break up the impaction and return things to normal. Most fish can go a week to ten days without food and be just fine.

3. Periodic aspiration of the swim bladder works very well. Basically, you stick a needle in the swim bladder and suck out some of the air. Not something to be entered into lightly, but does work well. This is not a cure, but a successful treatment. The head veterinarian at the Baltimore Aquarium prefers this method.

4. Partial pneumocystectomy. This is another word for surgical removal of part of the swim bladder. I mention this less as a practical option but more just to let people know that there are vets out there doing X-rays, surgery, general anesthesia, even cancer chemotherapy on fish.