i just noticed this morning as i was feeding my fish that a young ram i have has an odd swelling on it's cheek, next to the mouth and just below its eye. the rams is a few months old and about an inch long. the swelling is as big as it's eye and the best way of describing it is it looks like a big pimple or zit.

has anyone seen anything similar and or have and an idea what it may be?

without knowing, i am not sure what treatment to use if any and wether i should isolate the fish.

any help or suggestions would be much appreciated.

It might have injured itself on the inside of its mouth/gill plate or got a small bit of gravel stuck thats hurt it and what your seeing is caused by a fungal infection. Or it could possibly be a cyst of some sort, or even worse still a type of cancerous growth, but I'm guessing the lump has grown pretty quickly so I'm more inclined to think injury with secondary infection. I've also seen ulcers rise to a lump before the infection breaks the surface so it could be one of them.

Its worth netting the ram and having a look to see if theres anything visable that may be causing the lump, and isolate it while you see how it develops. If it is a fungus or ulcer Myxazin or Melafix might help treat both - but if theres an injury causing this that you can't see it might take a while to sort while that heals as well.

thanks for the advice Monkeh. i get the feeling u may be right about an injury. the lump didnt seem to get any bigger through the day and the fish was still active and eating.

i wasnt able to examine it closely as it is a bit small and i didnt want to stress the fish too much. i have isolated it though in a 5g hospital tank. i dont have any Myxazin or Melafix handy but i did have some methalene blue so i dosed the tank with this. apparently MB has antiseptic qualities which i imagine may help. i will leave it in there for a few days and keep an eye on it.

i will post an update later. thanks again.

Any recent developments Nick?

the swelling hasnt gone down yet and now the fish's eye is a bit swollen. it is still eating and swimming about but unless it gets well itself i think i may be losing this battle.

on a positive note i think one of it's siblings is maturing into a female, looks like it has a pink tummy and is flirting with the 2 older males.

I was thinking earlier on in this Thread, that it seemed a good thing the bump wasn't on the eye. My last two Rams developed a swollen eye shortly before before they died.

Hopefully your young female will maintain the family line...

good news and bad news (mostly bad tho)

i put the ram back in the main tank after 4 days in 'hospital' as i think being on its own in the hospital tank stresses the fish out and can add to the illness.

before i did this i noticed that my largest angel has stopped eating for a few days and taken to hanging about the sides of the tank. it also had a trail coming from its bum. plus one of my young rams has also developed some white bumps, that are smaller than the other rams 'injury'. the bumps dont look like white spot, fungus or velvet.

so yesterday i decided to try an anti internal bacteria treatment in the main tank that the rams and angel are in. today i noticed that the 1st ram to go ill is looking a bit better. its swollen eye has gone down but it still has the lump on its gill plate. the other ram still has some small, but larger than white spot bumps. the angel is still acting all shy and doesnt appear to be eating, altho it may have taken a small nibble at some dried bloodworm. the angel doesnt look ill in any way apart from having a trail, which is now gone. it is still hanging about the sides of the tank tho. when i 1st got it a week or so ago it was shy and not eating for the 1st day but then seemed to settle in ok as it was eating ok and swimming about with the other angel.

any suggestions as to what may be wrong with it would be appreciated.

If the trail coming from the angel is white and stringy then its a sign of internal parasites or worms which are a bad thing but common these days, they can weaken fish without you ever knowing leading to all sorts of secondary infections including hole in the head disease in cichlids which you could have been seeing the first signs of in the ram (at this point I'll kick myself for not thinking of that one for you :/) and probably why the first ram has shown signs of recovery with antibac treatments, but to cure it properly you might need to do some looking round for some remedies. The first one I'd try is crushed garlic - it seems some of the places round the net are raving about its wonderful healing powers and after trying it my veiltail angel picked up after looking sickly for ever. The next one that I'm planning to dose my own tank with ahead of moving the fish to breeding tanks is called wormer plus which can be found

Only registered users can see links on this forum! Register or Login on forum!

or

Only registered users can see links on this forum! Register or Login on forum!

.

Hope it helps you mate.

Before I forget, if you plan to use different treatments oin your tank make sure you run carbon for a day or 2 to remove the old ones, and if I was doing it myself then I'd opt for deworming followed by the anti internal bacteria treatment. Always try and sort the cause then the secondary if it doesn't right itself once the fish feel stronger. Good luck mate.

I can't really think of anything beyond what Monkeh listed, back at the beginning. And if anything, I'm hoping it is Worms, because they are relatively easy to combat. Do a search on Planet Catfish, I'm sure I saw something there on 'Garlic', a few weeks back. And for some reason, 'Pumpkin Seeds' is in my mind. Search for that on PC as well. It may be linked to a User called 'Pumpkinman' or the like...

It's difficult to diagnose sight unseen. White Bumps lead in all directions, and not many of them have favourable outcomes.

Since my Daughter is kicking me off this machine, I'll jump to one with a scanner, and pop up a couple of 'White Bump' pics, see if you can ID the culprit from a 'line-up'!

thanks Monkeh, very helpfull suggestions.

one thing tho, if i was to use some crushed gralic, have u an idea of what kind of 'dose' i should use?

i always do big water changes after a teatment myself and like u said i intend to use some carbon in the tank as soon as the treatment has had a few days. thanks for the reminder tho.

i will try to get a hold of some worming treatment aswell.

again 'muchos grassy arse'

Dosing for garlic is more guesswork than a science (to me anyways). All I do every couple of weeks is take a fresh clove, crush it into a tub with a couple of tablets for the cats/khulis and some prima for the angels and feed it to the fish after about 5-10mins to let the processed food soak up some of the juices, and a few bits of the crushed garlic that stick to the food goes in as well. I use it more for preventative work because I'm sure my veiltail had a dose of worms when I got it and I don't want them to take root in what I'm using as future breeding stock.

It seems to work ok and the veiltail is looking a lot better for it, but my fish are always looking for food and try to eat anything that goes in the tank (as my eldest found out when he dangled his fingers in at feeding time ).

Here we go. Note this is the 'White' Bumps only, and just stuff I have at hand. There are probaly others. I've added the basic symptoms.



1. Nodular diseases / Cysts. Spherical or oval, smooth yellowish cysts, up to 1cm(0.4in) across, on skin, fins and gills.
2. White Spot / Guppy disease.
3. Wasting disease / Fish TB. Pale shallow lesions on skin, plus other symptoms such as hollow-bellied appearance, 'pop-eye', color loss and listlessness.
4. Tumours. Unusual growths or swellings clearly visible on any part of the fish's body.
5. Fish pox / Lymphocystis. Smooth white, grey or pink growths on skin and fins often looking like molten wax.
6. Ulcer disease. Lesions, ulcers or sores on the body, plus reddening at fin bases and vent.

Oh, and

Only registered users can see links on this forum! Register or Login on forum!

are worth a look at.

thanks Peter.

having looked at ur post and pics, followed by some research on the net i am prone to think that my fish have Lymphocystis.

apparently there is no treatment other than keeping the tank conditions as good as possible including reducing stress factors. the disease may run its course in 4 weeks and mortality is relativley low. apparently the disease can remain in the tank for yrs which is a bummer as i dont realy fancy having to totaly redo the tank.

with luck and good general care my fish will hopefully survive altho they may show a scar or 2 from the experience.

i will post an update later if there are any developments.