Sick Royal Grama still alive Advice Please!

[travis32]

Well, I just did a water change today and I discovered that my royal grama is still alive!!! I thought my betta had eaten her because there was no sign of her corpse, and I pulled things out of the tank and there were no signs of it anywhere. Evidently I missed a spot or something.

Well, It came out with the water change, and it doesn't look good. It's in QT for ich, however, it has brown patches on it's side where the ich exploded in hypo... It's yellow parts of the body are losing color (could be from hiding away from the light, not sure.)

And it now has swimming problems worse than before. However it seems to be breather better than it was before, though I don't know much about fish biology. It's gills were barely moving before, now they're taking methodical movements.

Due to loss of control of it's swim bladder it made it's way to the bottom of the tank and landed partially upside down in a spot the pumps or filters wouldn't get it.

Do I continue to let it suffer? Can the swim bladder heal naturally? Or do I simply flush it now?

It's been in hypo now for 10 days and has reached this point of distress. The other two fish continue to eat good, and show no signs of distress. Coming out and swimming around regularly.

I've kept the water at 1.010. 7.8 ph. I'm not sure what else to do. Healing a swim bladder is out of my realm.... Could ich have damaged it's swim bladder?

 

[travis32]

If the fish is a goner, just tell me, I'm o.k. with accepting that. I was just wondering if it's finding a place to hide right now (and rest) if it's using this time to recover from the dead ich coming off it's body and the swim bladder issue is a side effect of the ich?

If that's the case, Is it reasonable the fish is doing what it needs to recover, and in a few days, it will be swimming around like nothing's wrong, or should I expect it to simply be dead because it can't recover from a damaged swim bladder?

 

[travis32]

PIC Attached!

PIC Attached!

Here it is. The filter intake it's next to is not running, so it just swam up against the intake and stayed there. I unplugged the filter when it got there so it wouldn't be stuck.

GOOD News though, It swam with all it's might to the top when I fed flake and took little bites of little flake pieces. It was partially upside down when it did so, but it kept chasing the food!!!!

I feel so sorry for the thing, it is struggling so hard to live! Eating now, and trying to hide to protect itself, and trying to regain boyancy. Now that it's eating again, I have greater hope it could live, if only it could get it's swim bladder functioning again.

Is that possible?