Goldfish Ulcer Disease (aeromonas salmonicida)
This infection has many names - goldfish ulcer
disease, carp erythrodermatitis or more commonly saddle-back, as the ulcers
straddle the dorsal fish or are high up on the dorsal muscle.
The
disease is very infectious, affects goldfish in aquariums and ponds and can
remain dormant without a host for long periods.
Restocking will lead to
reinfection.
Injections are the only treatment, but with small fish the
injection can just add to the fishes problems.
This is a typical ulcer brought about by a body fluke
infection. An infected wound of aeromonas hydrofiller, damage done to fish by
flicking and scratching.
Wounds look like open blisters, bright pink to
red, with mostly a white outer ring.
Well advanced ulcers can pass as a
heron wound and are often mistaken for one. When a pond or tank is infected
with most fish showing ulcers its kinder to put them to sleep with over-dose of
clove oil.
Mostly seen in summer, infected fish seem to feed and swim
quite happily as this disease is thought to attack the vital organs and nerve
centers in the latter part of the disease's progress.
This looks very much like a ulcer, but I
strongly suspect fish TB. This is a classic wound for fish TB and quite often,
as in this case, the fish has been well looked after.
Often fish carry
spores for many years, but what activates the dormant spores is not known. But
on a post-mortem squashed saline preps of kidney and liver show spores are very
evident - very like small
cysts.