Fish Wound

[amit]

Hi,

I noticed my Tench has an open wound on one of his sides and generally doesn't look very well. He isn't moving around much and isn't eating.

Not sure what could have caused the injury. I have a 3500L pond with about 7 fish. All other fish seem fine so far. The pond is about 1 year old.

Water params are
Ph 8.4 - Ph has been 8.4 consistently for the last year.
Nitrite 0
Amonia 0-0 - 0.25
Nitrate 0

Any ideas what might be wrong with him and anything I can do to help?

Thanks

 

[IPA]

Sorry to hear about your fish. For us metricly challenged 3500L is about 924 gallons so definitely overstocked. If it’s from physical injury I’d just monitor and keep an eye out if others show signs of injury or illness. If you can catch the fish you could try treating in a hospital tank. I would not know however what to treat with since I only keep goldfish and I’ve never had luck treating illness in fish. I’ve addressed any water quality issues and either they’ve healed themselves or I’ve had to make the hard decision to stop them from suffering. Anytime I’ve treated the fish it’s always ended in the later.

 

[Lisak1]

It's impossible to tell from the picture - I don't even see a wound, honestly - bu I'm gonna guess water quality as well - too many fish for the size of the pond, sadly. That ammonia number should always be zero.

 

[amit]

Thanks for both your responses. It was hard to get a good picture. if you look under the right eye that's where the skin is missing.

Retesting the ammonia its 0, it was hard to differentiate the colours on the chart first time but in the past ammonia has always been 0.

 

[Mmathis]

Do you have rocks in your pond, or anything with sharp edges that it could have rubbed against? I don’t know anything about tench, but fish in the carp family can be injured during spawning.

Can you tell if it looks like a sore vs an injury? Did you notice any unusual behavior with this guy around the time you noticed the spot? Are any of your other fish showing signs of distress?

Do you have a separate tank or pool that you can isolate him in? Maybe you can get a better look, as well as see if he has any other injuries.

 

[amit]

Do you have rocks in your pond, or anything with sharp edges that it could have rubbed against? I don’t know anything about tench, but fish in the carp family can be injured during spawning.

Can you tell if it looks like a sore vs an injury? Did you notice any unusual behavior with this guy around the time you noticed the spot? Are any of your other fish showing signs of distress?

Do you have a separate tank or pool that you can isolate him in? Maybe you can get a better look, as well as see if he has any other injuries.

Thanks for your response.

No rocks, sharpest thing would be the edges of the plastic pond plant.

From my uneducated perspective, it looks like the skin has been ripped off below the eye and it looks like a chunk is missing and all I can see is red flesh underneath where the skin was. I noticed the tench wasn't eating as per usual which when I took a closer look and noticed the injury. It's possible it could be caused by spawning as there was a lot of frantic action in the pond going on the past week or so.

I don't have a separate area to isolate him I can try source something, I worry that trying to catch him will stress him out more. Attached one more picture which may be a bit a more useful but hard to get anything clearer at the moment. All other fish in the pond seem fine, no visual issues and all eating and acting as per normal.