Help! Sick Banded Jawfish!

Over the last month or so, I noticed my Banded Jawfish was not acting the same.  He used to react when you approached the tank (anyone on the Tank Tour in October 2010 saw that) and now he doesn't react at all, like he's blind.  About 2 weeks ago, he abandoned his "home" and started wandering all over the tank.  His tail fin has been nipped at, almost gone.  He wasn't eating hardly at all from what I could see.  I had to stick food right in front of him.  Yesterday I fed him a chunk and he spit it out.  Today he was laying on his side, still breathing, and when I prodded him he would try to right himself by wedging against a rock, but it wouldn't last long.
I pulled out an old isolation box and netted him (he was easy to catch, which is not normal for these wicked fast fish) and he is swimming around like he's trying to get to the bottom.  Now that I have had a close look, something is not right.  It looks like he has a tumor or ulcer near his anus.  See if you can see what I'm talking about here.







Anyone?

 

got a good video of it...uploading to YouTube ASAP

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuumYBShTlM

 

Hmmm...what can be done about that?

 

So it sounds like it's either going to work itself out, or he's going to die? At least the cage I have him in is forcing him to keep moving rather than just sit there and die. Maybe that will help...

 

I got this comment on YouTube

"I would do a freshwater dip then do hypo treatment in a qt tank. His anus looks like he's got bloat which is an intestinal parasite."

Sound right?

 

He is in the tank by himself now, seems to have picked a spot to just sit there. When I feed him I pretty much have to stick the food in front of him, then he grabs hard at it like he's hungry, but spits all or most of it out a few seconds later. The swelling around his anus has gotten slightly puffier, and his scales are protruding in the middle portion of his body (dropsy)

Does this point to something more specific?

I have been too busy to do any treatments. Today I plan to do the freshwater dip and start hyposalinity treatment to see if that works. I've never done either so a few questions:

I was going to dip in RO/DI - is that fine? How long do I dip him for?

I have heard that you can lower salinity quickly without much of an issue, and raising it quickly is the problem. Is this true for hypo treatment as well? Should I do the FW dip then transfer him to the hypo tank, or FW dip, back to main tank, then lower salinity slowly?

It's going to be a BB 40B and I'm going to throw in a couple of PVC pipe sections for him to hide in.

 

Yeah that is true. Well my tap water is high in pH, comes out of the tap around 9.8 and doesn't drop with aeration either. So I guess I could de-chlor that with Prime and match the temp/pH and do the dip...

 

So he looks dead, right?



But he's not. He 'sleeps' like this. I poked him and move the rock he wedged himself under and he 'comes to' and rights himself. I keep expecting him to die but he ate last night and didn't spit it out. I dropped a small frag in the tank the other day and he darted towards it like it was food, so I know he hasn't completely lost his appetite. I suppose that's a good sign.

Been way too busy lately to treat him...hope to get to that tonight.