Flowerhorn Cloudy Eye Possible Blindness

[cruxmaster]

Hi,

I have a juvenile flowerhorn who recently (within the last 2 weeks) developed one cloudy eye. He is relatively new to me as I've only had him for 2 months. He's been up and down with some stress and I've been doing my best to manage the situation.

I've been maintaining water parameters with low to 0 Ammonium, Nitrates, and Nitrites. I was trying to maintain a higher PH (7.8-8.2) but at some point, probably during weekly water changes, it dropped to 7.2ish. I'm thinking this is the main cause of my problems. I also noted lower KH and GH around 2-3 (obviously contributing to some PH bounce). I've just added about a pound of crushed oyster shells to help increase the KH and add some buffer.

I removed the charcoal and started adding Melafix every morning to his tank (75 gal hex) at about 30ml. Been doing this for 4 days now....

He is maintaining a good appetite and is always searching for food but I've noticed he has difficulty finding floating pellets and will keep swimming around and seeking them out as they get stuck in corners. He does find them and occasionally he will eat one from my fingers once in a while. I just started soaking medium pellets in Metronidazole and letting them dry. I got him to eat two yesterday. His stomach looks slightly bloated as well (I'll try to add a pic).

My questions are:
1. Am I ok dosing both Melafix and MetroPlex simultaneously
2. Should I be looking to get a pippet or syringe to aid with feeding and meds
3. He does appear to have a little vision (maybe sees shadows), any possibility he will regain some vision?

Any assistance/comments would be appreciated!

 

[FINWIN]

Hi

Stay aggressive withf water changes. Sounds like a water quality issue, especially once the ph drops. Also, those large rocks will hold a lot of crud that will foul the water constantly. You might want to have them in piles instead of covering the bottom. See if his eye will clear with just clean water and some salt.

 

[cruxmaster]

Hi FINWIN, apologies I forgot I cross posted this and just noticed your reply. Appreciate the info! I really love the rocks but I feel like they've caused me problems in the past as well as now. I just moved that FH to a hospital tank and will put him somewhere else if/when I get him healthy. He did improve but not sure his sight fully returned, he was eating but it would take him a bit to find any floating pellets. Sadly, he just took a turn for the worst and stopped eating, long stringy white poo, hanging in the corners, shrunken KOK (H2O was good except for Nitrate 20-40, did an immediate change).

I'm ebbing toward Heximita and trying to plan my next round of medication.....I was doing about 30% changes twice a week with good vacuuming during each change (it's actually easy to push the stones away and get the crud off the bottom).


I have another FH as well, he's smaller and I got a deal on him from a local store that was closing. He has/had bad HEX and I've been treating him with Clear (after nearly 10days of MetroPlex in his 5gal hospital tank). He is much improved but still has some white stringy poo. Hopefully it fully clears in another day or two and I can think about moving him to a proper sized home.