My sick onyx perc

[cjburden]

Well I've had a juvenile onyx perc for roughly a week now, and over the last few days he began to show some signs that he was having problems; erratic behavior, stringy looking excrement, weird spot in his mouth, etc... It really came to a head yesterday when there were a few white spots on the right side of his head and he was trying to scratch them on just about anything he could, substrate, tank wall, etc. When I woke up this morning his condition looked considerably worse. He had an odd white-ish discoloration covering various parts of his body and was scratching like mad. I looked up some of the different diseases and of the common ones out there it seemed like it was possibly amyloodiniosis (marine velvet). Velvet was described as being a dusty looking coating on the body.

About 6 hours ago I decided to try giving him a freshwater dip, and inspecting him now he looks to be in much better condition. The spots on the side of his head and on the inside of his mouth (the one in his mouth was actually preventing him from closing his mouth properly) are completely gone, as is the dusty appearance that was covering his body. He has only scratched one time since the that I've noticed, and he had his first normal looking bowel movement in days!

I'm very excited and hoping he makes a recovery. I'd be very sad if I lost this little guy. This will be my first (at least partially) successful treatment of a fish, and while I know only time will tell how successful it was, I'm also pretty happy about that!

 

[this is me]

wish you luck.

 

[TheUltimateNoob]

i'm not completely sure but i don't think one fresh water dip will cure amoolydiniosis. i did some researching on this a couple months ago and thought i read that copper had to be. but don't take my word for it. just giving you a heads up. there are some really knowledgeable people in the disease forum on RC. i guess if he looks like he's getting better, just let him be and watch him for a while. if it comes back then perhaps read up in the disease forum. good luck.

 

[TheUltimateNoob]

here you go. according to this, copper is the only effective treatment for amoolydiniosis. the freshwater dip is a test to see if the disease really is amoolydiniosis.

 

[TheUltimateNoob]

doh. here's the link.

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/amyloodinium.html

 

[cjburden]

Yeah, that is the site I actually read about the dip on. The problem is that I am not entirely sure that it IS amyloo. I figure I will give it a couple of days to see how he recovers (or doesn't) and go from there. It is going to be a pain to set up a quarantine tank right now but will resort to that if whatever he has does come back.

 

[shearwater]

Please keep us posted! I am treating a black ocellaris in my QT right now for the same symptoms. Tried hyposalinity and malachite green for ich - no response. Did the 3 minute freshwater test for velvet - seems negative, but it's hard to tell. Tomorrow I am going to start treating with copper. http://www.petsforum.com/personal/t.../cupramine.html

This is a picture posted on RC of a black clown with velvet. My clown's symptoms look identical to these. Do yours?
You've probably already seen that thread: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=360607
Good luck!

-Peter

 

[cjburden]

I'm having an equally hard time telling whether any trophonts became dislodged during the freshwater dip. It seemed like some possibly did, but it was hard to tell for sure whether i was looking at parisites, or detritus that I possibly hadn't washed out of the container/had gotten into the container from the net. I will say that that fishes condition looks a bit different than what mine looked like.

It's tough to describe, but it almost looked as if you took something dark, dipped it in saltwater, and then allowed it to dry. Blotchy patches that looked almost dusty or something... hard to really describe without a good pic and unfortunately I am unable to find my digital camera (I know, how do you lose a digicam). He did scratch a few more times after my initial post, but none of the spots seemed to come back. We shall see.

 

[shearwater]

I know what you mean about the dip test. I'm guessing that the results should be pretty obvious, if it's amlyood. aka velvet. In our case, it's probably just ich trophonts and tank crud that we were observing.

I'm going to stick with the malachite green a little longer in the QT. I will probably drop the salinity again too. I hope that doing both simultaneously is not too stressful.

Texture of the patches aside, does yours look better off, or worse than the one in the picture?

 

[cjburden]

it did not look as bad as the one in the picture, but I hadn't waited very long before taking action when it became obvious he had some sort of parasite.

I'm not really sure that the clow in the picture had velvet. It certainly doesn't look like it was described, at least to my novice eye.

What is your salinity at right now, and how rapidly have you dropped it? I don't think it would be a good idea to drop it by more than a point a day. Not sure if treating with malachite simultaneously would be too stressful.

 

[NateHanson]

I was told by others that you can drop the salinity to 1.009 immediately if you acclimate the fish for a few hours by dripping, or slowly adding water to the container they're in. I don't remember who it was, but it was someone I believed. Sorry I can't be more specific.

 

[cjburden]

guess i was a little off....
although it doesn't seem like you should drop it immediately
certainly it can be done faster than i would have thought.

How do you treat?

It is very important that you can accurately measure the salinity or specific gravity of the water. Cheap hydrometers, especially the swinging arm variety, do not have enough accuracy. If the salinity is too low, it is possible the health of the fish will be compromised. If the salinity is too high, it may have no affect on the parasites, as discussed above. A refractometer is the safest method for measuring salinity. If you don't have access to a refractometer, a lab grade floating glass hydrometer should suffice.

The goal is to granularly reduce the salinity of the water to between 12 and 14ppt and leave it at that salinity for at least 4 weeks but preferably 6 weeks. Basically continue the treatment for at least 4 weeks after the last spots disappeared.

The salinity must be lowered gradually to give the fish time to adjust to the lower salinity and more importantly ensures the bacteria in the biological filter can adjust. It should take around 2 days to get from 35ppt to 14ppt.

Your starting point should be between 1.025 and 1.027. Replace about one fifth of the volume with RO, RO/DI or aged freshwater that has been well aerated. Repeat this 12, 24 and 36 hours later, monitoring the specific gravity along the way. After the fourth water change the specific gravity should be 1.010 or pretty close. Wait a few hours to make the final adjustment to get down to 1.009. Note that you can estimate the resulting specific gravity. If you are changing one fifth of the water and the current specific gravity is 1.025 the result will be:

 

[cjburden]

update:

the clown has looked a lot better since the bath up until today. He hasn't had that dusty look and hasn't had any spots on his skin/hasn't been scratching. Today though he looks to really be laboring swimming around the tank, and there is something wrong with the his gills, they are really inflamed. It looks as if he has jowels. I'm not sure what to do for him but I don't have a very good feeling about him right now.

 

[shearwater]

Sorry to hear about that, cjburden. Did you start the hyposalinity treatment? I am treating in QT with copper and Maradel (antibiotic/vitamins). Day 3 of treatment, no signficant change yet.

 

[TheUltimateNoob]

sometimes they are so badly infected that they just can't recover. hope he makes it though. sorry.