Sick/Injured Otocinclus

My Otocinclus has been looking bad for a week, with a pinkish/injured face. I'm not sure what's wrong with him. His nose doesn't look fuzzy, so I guess it's not a fungus? It looks big and pink and raw. I've been doing ~25% water change daily and dosing with Paraguard. He looked worse a week ago when I first saw it and I think he's gotten a little better, but still nowhere near normal. He seems to be acting normally otherwise-I've seen him eating and pooping. It's worth noting that a few weeks ago I think he might have hurt himself because the very tip of his nose was scraped up with a bit of white, but healed quickly in a couple of days. He's the only oto in the tank. None of my other fish or my shrimp are sick. I haven't witnessed any of them bothering him. My pH is consistently 7.6, with ammonia, nitrate, nitrite 0 ppm.

Does anyone know what this is/how to treat? Unfortunately I don't have a quarantine tank to put him in.

 

Is the white spot raised? My guess that it tried to get somewhere and scraped himself.

 

Is the white spot raised? My guess that it tried to get somewhere and scraped himself.

Yes, It's like a big pinkish knob on his face

 

I agree that it looks like an injury. Does anything in the tank have sharp edges? The original injury might have gotten infected or he did the same thing again and just got a worse injury this time.

 

I agree that it looks like an injury. Does anything in the tank have sharp edges? The original injury might have gotten infected or he did the same thing again and just got a worse injury this time.

The driftwood he's sitting on has some pointy parts, and there's a small rock in the corner of the tank that he definitely could have scraped himself on if he got startled or something.

 

Since you don't have a quarantine tank and your perimeters are fine I would just keep an eye on the injury for any white growth or other infection sign and keep on top of water changes. If it's just a scrape it should heal on its own like the first injury. Is there someway you could round off the pointy parts of the wood?

 

Since you don't have a quarantine tank and your perimeters are fine I would just keep an eye on the injury for any white growth or other infection sign and keep on top of water changes. If it's just a scrape it should heal on its own like the first injury. Is there someway you could round off the pointy parts of the wood?

At this point the wood has gotten pretty soft so it should be fairly easy to blunt some of the edges. Thank you so much!

 

No problem! Hope he gets better soon

 

How is your little guy doing?