"Tanks" first gill curl massage a success

My RTC "Tank" has developed gill curl, I am thinking he's had it since a baby when I got him and has become more prelevant as he's grown. I got him at 2" on June 1st, he's now darn near 9"

Anyway, I bought some clove oil from GNC and got him into a 5 gallon bucket. Added 20 drops of clove oil and waited for him to calm down. Took about five minutes and I took him out before he was completely sedated. Massaged the gills fifty times and got him right back into the tank. Within a couple minutes he was swimming around again. He def still has gill curl but I am going to do it every fifth day for a month and see if that cures it. If not I will be contacting a veterenarian and/or fish and game and then performing the surgery. The LFS I got him from said they haven't been able to find a cure, and if I do to let them know because they will want me to do it on their fish. I will post pics of him in a couple hours when he's settled in and keep updates of him with pics in this thread. Thanks for looking.

Also, does anyone know how many times you should do the massaging? He was only out of the water for a minute and a half tops.

How are things looking? This shows his left side, which is still worse than the right but looks a lot better.


Heres his right side, looking pretty good for one days work.


Dont mind the messy tank, it was cleaned shortly after he settled in.

I just gently rubbed over his gills repeatedly

Mosdefenate;4308261; said:

thanks i may have to try this soon... how often should you try this?

you can kind of see what mines looks like in my avatar... from a back view on my cat you can see inside the gills to the point where sometimes when he eats feeders the tails stick out -_-

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I am going to do it 4x in a month and see how that works. Wanna give him some time to recoop.

Knowdafish;4308272; said:

Keep up the good work and keep us updated! Out of curiosity, what do your nitrates read?

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I will be testing the water tomorrow, well today actually since its 3:30 am here. For now I am off to go fishing for some tog and triggerfish! YUM