How to treat a swim bladder problem and other daunting questions...

[colewyn]

I have a twelve gallon eclipse tank with five pounds of live sand on a dolomite base, 15 pounds of live rock and two oscelaris clowns. About three weeks ago, one of the clowns started swimming vertically, with its head facing the surface of the water, and stopped eating. I tried a fresh water dip, but the fish just sank to the bottom and refused to me, even when gently prompted, so I quickly removed it from the water and put it back in the tank. (I floated the water for a good while, so it could not ahve been temperature shock.) I did a 30% water change and then treated the tank with a multi-symptom medication for parasites for ten days. After about the first or second day, I got the distinct impression that my fish was blind since it began bumping into the sides of the tank all of the time and won't run from a net. Over the last three weeks it has been getting lower and lower in the tank. At first it was always at the surface, now it is just a few inches from the bottom. Aside from swimming vertically, which takes a great deal of effort, the fish shows no other obvious symptoms. How long can a fish go without eating? Is there anything I can do to make the fish eat or to help it eat?

Any suggestions about how to treat my poor fish would be much appreciated.

[billsreef]

In order to help you out I will need to ask you bunch of questions that need to be answered.

How long have you had the fish?
Was it wild caught or tank raised?
Any signs of rapid or unusaully slow breathing rate?
Any spots, torn fins, cloudy slime coat or missing scales?
What other tank mates are present?
What are your actuall test values for NH4, NO2, and pH?

[colewyn]

The tank was set up in July of 1999.

I have had the fish a little less than one and a half years.
(Since 9/99)

Not sure if wild caught or tank raised.

It was breathing rapidly for about the first two days it started swimming vertically, but after I started using Clout (the anti-parasite medication) its breathing seemed to return to normal.

No spots, torn fins, cloudy slime coat or missing scales, although over the last few days its color is getting a bit pale.

The only other tank mate is another clown. It does not pick on or bother the sick one at all.

Nitrates <15ppm
Nitrites 0
Ammonia 0
pH 7.9 (It has been that way since the tank was first set up a year and half ago, and buffers don't seem to change that).
Temperature 80 (About a day or so before the fish started acting funny, the temp spiked to about 84 or 85 for a day or so due to a heater problem, but the heater was adjusted and the temp returned to 80)

Specific gravity 1.022

Thanks a lot for your help.

[billsreef]

Hmm, that temp spike should have been readily handled by the fish but is a possibility to caused enough stress to allow the fish to get sick.

Have you made any changes or additions to the tank in the last few weeks?

Since the rapid breathing was reduced with addition of the Clout I would suspect some kind of infection. If you haven't made any new additions (this includes LR, inverts etc.) Than I would be inclined to suspect that a normally benign protozoan became an opertunistic pathogen taking advantage of the stressed out fish. If the fish is still showing any signs of rapid breathing I would remove it to a hospital tank and treat with a copper based medication such as Cupramine as these are typically more effective on protozoans than Clout (which is excellent for larger parasites). It is also not unusual for fish in this type of situation to have secondary bacterial infections so I would also co-treat with an antibiotic such as Nitrofuran or MaracynII(SW).

The pH problem might be the test kit you are using, some are fairly unreliable. What brand are using? I would suggest taking a water sample somewhere for a comparison reading. If it is indeed that low than test your alkalinity. BTW even if it is 7.9 that is not low enough to be the cause of your problems.

HTH and is not too confusing as it's getting late and my eyelids are trying to close and my fingers are having trouble finding the right keys :eek:

[colewyn]

Thanks for the advice. I am using a fasTesT kit "Another fine Sea Test product from the manufacturer of Instant Ocean."

This morning my fish is laying on the bottom of the tank. It is still breathing, so I will try to see if the meds will work. Unfortunately, the town where I live only has one pet shop and that is Petsmart, which does not carry many decent marine meds. All of the Maracyn they have is for freshwater only. I will try the copper and see if there is a petshop in another county somewhere that has what you have recommended. Hopefully, it is not too late, but things aren't looking good.

Thanks again, I will let you know how things turn out.

Darryl

[billsreef]

I'll give you a couple of other antibiotics that you might come across more readily than the SW Maracyn II that will work in both FW as well as SW which means even a FW store will be likely to have them.

My first choice would be Nitrofuran or Furan2, depends on brand what the label will be. The other good choice is Kanacyn. Lastly Tetracycline is a possibility but has been around long enough to have some drug resistant strains of bacteria out there. The thing that these drugs have in common is that they are tissue soluble, meaning that the fish can adsorb the antibiotic without having to eat any. Unfortunately many of the antibiotics commonly sold are not tissue soluble and are not even effective against grahm negative bacteria which in about 90% of the cases are are the ones you need to kill.

Good luck

[colewyn]

Bill,

First off, thanks so much for all the helpful advice you have given me. I was able to get Maracyn II yesterday afternoon, but the only copper treatment I could find was SeaCure copper treatment, which purports to be composed of water, copper sulphate and citric acid.

I bought a one gallon tank with an airstone for an emergency quarantine. I filled the Q tank with water from the original tank because I was afraid of changing any parameters too fast at this point. I put in one drop of copper solution (which is what it says to do per gallon). I will try to get a copper test kit tomorrow so I can monitor the levels.

The maracyn II was a bit tricky. The directions say 2 tabs per 20 gallons the first day and then 1 per 20 the next five days. Since this tank is only a gallon, I put in about a quarter of one tablet yesterday and the a little smaller piece today. My fish is still laying on its side and breathing heavily, as it has been since yesterday morning. It seems to be a bit more distressed breathing tonight than it has been so far (which is pretty distressed).

Am I doing this right? Is there something I am overlooking? I am going to take a water sample to the not so LFS tomorrow in case the test kit I bought was a dud. Other than that, I feel quite helpless.

Thanks again for your help.

[billsreef]

Your on the right track. If anything with the antibiotic err on the heavy side for dosing. With the copper you definately will need the test kit, the line between theraputic levels and lethal is a small one with copper citrate. Just check the expiration date on the reagants for the copper test kit, if any where near the expiration date look for a more recent batch as the reagant has a short shelf life, somewhat shorter than the stated expiration date unfortunately.

Good Luck

[colewyn]

Okay, this is embarrassing, as well as frustrating. I took a water sample to a lfs today and when they tested it, they said the nitrites were 0, but the nitrates were off the scale, at least 200 ppm! (My test kit has shown it consistently to be about 15ppm) I don't know how they could have gotten so high in a tank with only two fish and all of that live rock, and the lfs had no ideas either.

Since I had filled the Q tank with water from the main tank, the LFS said I had to get that water changed ASAP. Over the course of a few hours, I got the water changed to about 80% new and 20% of the old. My poor fish is currently laying on the bottom breathing at a rate of five or six times a second. Was this too aggressive on my part? Also, since this tank has no heater, the temp is about 76 degrees. Should I go ahead and heat it to make it closer to 80? I have probably screwed this up beyond repair, but any thoughts based on this new info and what I should do now would be much appreciated.

[colewyn]

Change that "probably screwed things up beyond repair" to "definitely screwed things up beyond repair." My fish died. The LFS said that given the high levels of nitrates that the fish probably had major interior organ damage, but without knowing for sure I felt I had to try my best to give it a chance to get better. I guess changing the water so aggressively was just too much for a fish that could not even swim, but I didn't know what else to do.

Thanks for all of your help and advice. The remaining fish has been transferred to a different tank until I can figure out what happened in my main tank and get it fixed, so you can feel good knowing that your advice certainly saved the life of that fish. It is currently swimming happily and will hopefully have a very long life. I am going to get a new test kit. Any advice on the best kind to get would be appreciated.

Thanks again.

[FMarini]

Hi:
sorry about the fish, i've been following this thread. It really weird thou how both test kits were so disparate in there results. I would seriously concern myself w/ purchasing another kit(something like a LaMotte or Salifert), and getting to test results.
Second thing...Nitrate of 200ppm. I suspect this certainly may have contributed to the demise of the fish, but you should have seen more problem as the ppms increased. its not uncommon to find FO tanks w/ nitrates in the 100 to 150ppm and the fish don't seem wores for the wear, but maybe in your small tank this happened very quickly.
Your remedy was also too aggressive as this massive water change probably ended your fish,again on a tank this small you should do frequent but small water changes. Think about it. If your tank is empty it hold 12 gals of water, add in 5 lb sand/15lbs of live rock, your tank probably holds under 8 gals of water. So changing 6 gal of this is too drastic a change. Somethin along the order of 2 gals twice daily might have been sufficient. Over the course of 3 days you could have exchanged over 100% of the water.
One thing you should try is to match up the usual parameters of the water to ensure less shock to the fish (temp, salinity, ph etc). Any idea where all this poluution came from. Do you feed to much(too much for this size tank)? using tap water for top-offs?
sorry about this learning experience
frank
Good luck

[billsreef]

Sorry to hear about your clownfish :(

Did that LFS double check the nitrate test with a different kit? With such a disparate reading I would want to see at least a third reading to confirm which kit is right. Just because the LFS tested it doesn't mean that thier kit was right. More than once I have tested someones water and come up with wacky numbers and double checked only to find out that the reagents I had been using had gone south of the boarder.

[colewyn]

Thanks for the follow-ups.

I am definitely getting a new test kit and will try to get the kind Frank specified. I did not get a third reading from the store, but I wish I had. Frankly, based on what they told me, I panicked. They left me with the impression that my fish was basically swimming in poison, which it might have been for all I know, but I wonder now. I am going to test my water with a new kit, just to satisfy my own curiosity. I had two hermit crabs and three snails that died over the course of a few months about a year ago. (Actually the crabs just vanished, but I took that to mean they died). Should that have been a signal that things were wrong? The fish always seemed to be fine.

My short term plans are to do a few water changes the way Frank described so that all of the water is replaced. Should I stir up the sand and gravel and wash off the live rock while I am at it? I generally use tap water to fill my tank, but first mix it with salt in a milk jug and then put in stress coat to kill the chlorine. Is this a bad thing? I am sure that I have been feeding the fish a little too much, but not way overboard, but especially since my fish had stopped eating, I began to put extra food in to try to coax it to eat. Other than that, I have no idea how the nitrates could have gotten so high.

Thanks again.