[thexena1]

Has anyone seen or encountered anything like this before? It's on one of my small Balloon Molly fry, and has been progressively getting worse over the last month. It may have been around for longer, but his size and coloration would have made it really hard to tell. I've got him in a small 5g isolation tank.

I've been searching for weeks for a potential solution, and have come up with next to nothing. I've not been able to find anything remotely similar to this. He's fine, other than the "tumor". Still is eating well, color is normal, no respiration or swimming problems. None of the other fry have/had this problem. I'm completely baffled.

I'm struggling with the issue of euthanizing the fish. Read mixed reviews and reports about tumors and such. But if he begins to show signs of obvious distress, I'll put him down immediately. Just keep hoping someone somewhere will have seen something like this before and can tell me if it's treatable or not. I'm leaning towards putting him down, since the growth looks like it's ready to pop and I can't imagine that would feel very pleasant.

Wish I could tell you the past water parameters, but I'm not sure how accurate they were. I didn't know that the test kits were inaccurate after a while, and my kits were all old. The nitrates turned out to be high, but the problem was taken care of with water changes and Purigen. None of the other fry in the tank were affected. Everybody else is fine. If I could i.d. it, maybe I could treat it....