Dropsy: Common Type of Fish Disease

There are many different types of fish diseases in the fish world. Two of the most common types of fish diseases are Ich and Fin Rot. There's also another common type of fish disease which is known as Dropsy. Fin Rot and Ich are curable but need to be treated within the first couple of days, it's sort of like a snake bite to your average human. Dropsy on the other hand is like finding out that you have a tumor, either it can be cancerous or not. Dropsy works the same way in the fish world.

With Dropsy, the only symptom is bloating. It will make your fish look like a pine cone. The scales will stick straight out. Usually this will mean some type of organ failure and your fish might only have a couple of days to live. About 50% of my fish that have gotten Dropsy, died within the next 3 days. They would usually end up stuck to the filter system and then they would die. If your fish develops Dropsy, remove or shut off your filter system and stick with a bubbler until you find out the cause of Dropsy.

Dropsy is usually not treatable if it is caused by organ failure. They do make some types of medication for Dropsy so that might be worth a try but do not give your hopes up on saving your fish if it has this horrible disease. If you must remove the filter cartridges from your fish tank to treat your fish, you will want to remove them or the medication will become useless.

Another thing that might be causing your problems is constipation. When you remove or unhook your filter system from the fish tank you will want to fast your fish for at least 2 days. This means do not feed your fish any type of flake food. Once you see that your fish are going to the bathroom, you can start to feed them again in small amounts. Constipation will make your fish appear to have dropsy, so this might be a problem you want to check into.

I had one fish that lived for one full year with Dropsy. This was caused by organ failure but the fish managed to live for a full year with this problem. The fish was sucked through a siphon tube and still managed to live for one full year. The fish was very little and never grew after that time but it still managed to live that way for a long period of time. Never give up hope that you can save your fish. Try everything that you can do and then let nature run its course.