Beat Up Veiltail Angel

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StripedRaphCat1234$

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Hello everyone! I have a veiltail angel that I got from a good local aquarium store a couple of weeks ago (maybe a month now not 100% certain) and I got it pretty beat up by its fellow angel "mutt" tankmates. The actually body is fine, but the long fins look pretty sad. I've been trying to get it to look good again but all of my attempts have failed. I've fed it top quality flakes along with other foods and its been kept in a pretty sparse tank with mostly catfish, 1 black ghost knife and 1 platinum parrot.

I really want its fins to grow back to what they should look like so it won't always look sickly even though it is apparently healthy otherwise. Thank you in advance for any help!
 

fishorama

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Is it still being attacked by your "old" angels" ? If not, changing lots of water as often as you can will help a lot with fin regrowth. New growth often looks whitish along the edges but should eventually change to normal.

Sometimes there are permanent bent fins depending on where & how bad the damage was.
 

dougall

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Mar 29, 2005
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I will second keeping the water clean.

It avoids wounds getting infected, so make sure other stuff is as clean as possible so clean filters well, vacuum the gravel well, that sort of thing.

Lots of folks use melafix in this sort of case too.. I don't know if it helps, but I do like the smell.

But making sure the angel isn't still getting hurt too
 

StripedRaphCat1234$

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Oh I think I may have not been clear about its tankmates, the angels that it was with are at the store, this one is a loner in my tank and has not been with any other angels since I got it from the store. Right now my water is literally pristine, like if you look at one end of the fish tank it looks like it isn't even full of water (even tho it is).
 

StripedRaphCat1234$

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QQ, What is melafix? Is that a medicine for fish? Do y'all think I should put my angel temporarily in my 10 gallon for a while? Unfortunately I don't have it set up right now, but I could probably get it set up as a bare-bottom tank.
 

dougall

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There is more to 'pristine' water than how clear or sparkly it might be.

You need to be especially worried about TDS/DOC, and bacteria or other pathogens being in the water.

A UV sterilizer would help with bacteria or such, but changing lots of water to keep it clean can be very close to as effective without so much expense. A bare bottom, smaller tank (so long as the fish fits in correctly) is good but you need to consider the bacterial filter part of it too.

And melafix is an anti-bacterial... but effectiveness is reduced if you are repeatedly changing water... Your call.
 
Apr 2, 2002
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I would not medicate unless you see clear signs of fin rot as opposed to just damage. Next, angels like to have some cover and your tanks lacks it. If you cannot add some more taller live plants, then use fake ones. One thing to consider when discussing diseases and healing is that one of the things which opens a fish to getting infected is stress, fish which are stressed are going to catch things more easily and find it harder to heal when they do.

Sick fish tend to hide which is hard to do if there is no place to do so.

I am not a fan of Melafix. if a fish needs an antibiotic, it usually needs something a lot stronger than Melafix, imo. Also, unless a fish has something that is not contagious, it should be treated in an H tank where it gets medicated. This means less water so less meds are needed. It means no other fish can catch whatever and there is minimal stress as long as fish who need some cover have it. I am a live plant person, but I also saved some of my earlier fake plants to use in H tanks.

There is no magic trick to keeping fish healthy- there are basically three things that matter: water parameters (which includes quality), waterscape= which means tanks size and then all the things we add and to make it an environment which supports the needs of the fish. I am talking about rock, substrate, wood, live plants and even current. The last leg of this three legged stool is food. Quality really matters and this means ingredients. Better will cost more. But in the long run not having sick fish will save you more than the extra you might spend on dietary considerations.

In terms of food it usually means live is best, frozen is next and then commercial foods which have the fewest fillers and the most real food and which meet the nutritional needs of the fish. Fish need a proper diet and it is up to us to know what that means and then to make the effort to feed these things. I have commercial flake and sinking food, but I do not feed just those things by a long shot. I sometimes think that I have a better assortment of foods for my fish than I have for myself. I do not do live, but I do use all the best options after that. When I kept bn, I regularly fed them zucchini, green beans and the occasional blood worm as well as algae wafers and dry sinking veggie foods.

One lest observation when it comes to treating bacteria things. Most bacteria do better in warmer conditions. So when battling these it can also help to lower the water temp to the bottom of the range that is acceptable for the fish. If you have ever had surgery, you must have noticed how cool it is in the operating room ;)
 

StripedRaphCat1234$

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I have a UV filter. Is there any other kind of filter that removes pathogens from the water? I currently have two Fluval three step filtration filters and one UV filter. Could I add something to one or both of my filters?

I don't see any signs of fin rot, so I don't believe is disease. What is DOC/TDS? I don't believe I've heard of that? I believe my angel is being slightly abused by the black ghost knife and my platinum parrot because I've seen both fish occasionally nip at it. It may be more than occasionally though.

I don't have any live plants for my tank currently, unfortunately, I didn't set it up as a planted tank because it only has sand and no soil or any "nutrients" for the plants. Are there any plants that could just simply be attached to rocks or something like that? I honestly heavily dislike the look of plastic plants (no offense to those who like/use them), but I will use them if it will help my situation.

I feed my angel high quality flakes and it likes to take the occasional bite out of other foods I offer my other fish such as algae wafers, catfish pellets, and dried bloodworms. Should I make my angel eat a different kind of food or (side note, I don't have much money to supply a consistent supply of live food/expensive food)? And I feel the same way about the assortment of food T TwoTankAmin lol.

I truly appreciate all of y'all's help! :D
 
Last edited:
Apr 2, 2002
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There are plants that actually should be attached. Investigate anubias and Java fern plus floating plants to start. If you have a plant load in balance with your fish load and OK water, you many not need to fertilize. You will need some light. Look for plants which are considered easy to grow and which are happy with lower light levels. Plants use ammonia and they do not create nitrite or nitrate. In fact, if they cannot get as much ammonia as they want, they will use any nitrate that is available.

As for foods, it is as much quality as diversity. Angels eat a lot of things in the wild. Foof food for fish is never cheap but it can be reasonable. One way you can make is less costly, if you can, is to buy the bigger sizes which are cheaper/ounce, You can greeze them and only take out what you will feed in the next few weeks. Save your smaller food cans now for doing that.

TDS is Total Dissolved Solids. For our purposes it mean dissolve in our tank and/or our tap water/ In fact any water we want to measure. But it can also be used to measure the conductivity other liquids or metals.

Total dissolved solids is a measure of the dissolved combined content of all inorganic and organic substances present in a liquid in molecular, ionized, or micro-granular suspended form. TDS are often measured in parts per million. TDS in water can be measured using a digital meter.Wikipedia
The digital device above is a conductivity meter. It is what TDS is calculated from.

Pure water is a poor conductor of electricity. What makes most water conduct electricity is the solids dissolved in it. So the way to measure how much "stuff" is in the water one uses a conductivity meter.

How to measure water conductivity with a conductivity meter?

Conductivity is measured with a probe and a meter. Voltage is applied between two electrodes in a probe immersed in the sample water. The drop in voltage caused by the resistance of the water is used to calculate the conductivity per centimeter.
How do you read electric conductivity?

EC is measured in units called Seimens per unit area (e.g. mS/cm, or miliSeimens per centimeter), and the higher the dissolved material in a water or soil sample, the higher the EC will be in that material.
The symbol for microsiemens is µS. A TDS meter measures actually conductivity to which it applies a formula for multiplying it. There are several scales used. For my Blue Lab Guardian Monitor I can choose EC x 500 or x 700 to produce ppm. My water is currently 105 from the tap. The 500 is best for salt water and the 700 for fresh. I have a better intuitive understanding of ppm aka mg/l than I do for µS.
 

StripedRaphCat1234$

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Thank you again TwoTankAmin! I've had Anubias plants before, and they only lasted a little while (though I'll admit one of them flowered) and got very small. My algae in the tank smothered them I believe, how do I make that not occur again?
 
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