xSweeneyx

My two gold barbs have had a little bit of white edging their fins lately so I did frequent water changes, added stress coat, and garlic to the water. The one started to get better it seemed. The white stuff went away and he ate and swam normally. The other fish all seem normal. The other gold barb however started hiding in the castle and I didn't really see him eat or come out. Today when I went to check on him, I picked up the castle and he had blood on his side. I have moved him to quarantine and now I really don't know what to do.
His tank mates are three other cherry barbs (not usually nippers), two cories, and another gold barb.
I feel so terrible because I feel like I haven't been paying as much attention to my fish as I should be :/ so if there is anything I can do at this point please let me know.

sirdarksol

He may have injured himself on something and was hiding out to protect himself.
MelaFix and VitaChem will help him heal more rapidly, if you can get access to them.
Otherwise, the normal prescription of super-clean water, healthy food, and as little stress as possible is the order of the day.

fishnob

This happened to my gold barb a few weeks back, I added some nutrifin aqua plus the direction on the bottle to protect scales and fins...and it was gone the next day. Hope this helps =)

xSweeneyx

Thanks for the replies guys. The bleeding gold barb doesn't seem to be getting much better. His wounds now seem to have some white fuzzy stuff on it. I'll be picking up some melafix and hopefully he'll make a recovery. I've also noticed my other gold barb gills are pretty red. Is this normal? Or something I need to treat?

sirdarksol

Crud. I'm sorry. I should have asked about water quality parameters.
The usual cause of red gills is ammonia in the water. What are your ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate readings?
The MelaFix should help with the fungus growing on the wound, too.

Camille

The white fuzzy stuff is some kind of body fungus, I had a corydoras that had body fungus growing on an open wound. I treated him with mardel maracyn and it cleared it up. I wonder how your barb got that nasty wound... Are there any sharp objects in your tank that he could have rubbed up against?

xSweeneyx

My water perameters are normal, the pH is 7.0. He seems to be doing okay except for the red gills, but I've also noticed that he's gotten skinnier than usual.
I just did a water change and dosed the tank with melafix. I've never treated fish before so hopefully I'm doing this right!
I'm not really sure how he could have gotten cut. There are no sharp decorations or anything. Maybe the fish were picking on him while he was hiding out?
Aahh I just hope he recovers quickly :/