my damsel has a bum fin!

[fishynewbie]

i brought home a couple new damsel fish today and one of them has a fin thats torn. hes breathing really hard and hes swimming slow but other than that he seems in good spirits. is there anything i can do for it???

 

[kev]

Torn fins are very common, and usually occur when transporting fish. If your water quality is good, and your fish is eating.. then the torn fin should grow back very quickly(within 1-3 days). However, you need to check up on your fish and see if its showing any signs of disease. One of the reasons it could have got a torn fin is because of stress, and when fish are overly stressed they are more likely to come down with some type of disease.

 

[krux]

There is a product that you can buy that I personally have had good luck with in acelerating fin regrowth. It's called mela-fix and can be bough at most lfs, as well as online. It is based on tea tree extracts, and it is mostly an infection inhibitor, so fins can regrow without also having to work around any kind of infections that might be workin on the wound.
If is about 5 dollars for the smallest size, and I had no problems putting it right into a tank with plenty of LR. It says it is safe for all inverts, but I don't know if I would trust that if I had a tank full of delicate clams and what not.
If you don't want to use a product like this, just make sure you have good water quality, and that you do very frequent water changes if you arent running a big skimmer to keep the chances of infection at a minimum.
GL