Ammonia burn in QT

[Stelioshah]

Greetings, today I woke up to find that my flasher wrasse got ammonia burned in QT while I was asleep. I still could barely measure any ammonia using the salifert ammonia test, but the gill burn is obvious. I went to pharmacies and after searching for hours finally found one that would sell me a methylene blue solution, unfortunately the solution ended up being methylene violet. Would that do the trick? Does anyone have any experience? Is it more toxic to fish?

 

[brandon429]

@Jay Hemdal

I was looking for evidence of ammonia burning recently, this may be one/tbd

Stelio how do you ascribe ammonia burn as the issue and not a gill malady/response to medicine etc

can you post a video short clip of the fish at it sits now

I would not recover from gill burning by adding more meds, that's for sure if indeed it was an ammonia burn. you'd handle ammonia (not by Prime, by water change and add back in cycled surface area) and feed the fish incredibly well and reduce stressors and let it heal.

I have doubts its ammonia burn, but from the video we'd see the system layout and see if lack of dilution or surface area made that a real potential.

 

[Stelioshah]

@Jay Hemdal

I was looking for evidence of ammonia burning recently, this may be one/tbd

Stelio how do you ascribe ammonia burn as the issue and not a gill malady/response to medicine etc

When I woke up the fish was laying on its side, after a few hours I noticed that the gill area had a deep blood-like color, the fish was heavy breathing and barely able to stand up. After moving it to a temp controlled bowl with clean water it recovered within a few hours, but the redness on the gills remained. The burn is really obvious.

 

[brandon429]

thats very helpful to know, in narrowing down causatives and a qt is the sole place I'd expect to see a burn happen. can you post a pic of the setup at least so we can see it, try and capture the red areas/ there's a thread I wanted to find evidence of burns in so that people cycling a reef can see how hard it is to get a burn from a display, and what that burn looks like.

 

[Bucs20fan]

Water changes and adding a bacterial additive to the qt will help a ton. Some fritz turbo start and a bag of seachem matrix in the filter works wonders. All of my qt have matrix and get doses of turbo start. As long as you dont use an antibiotic the bacteria will persist.

 

[Stelioshah]

thats very helpful to know, in narrowing down causatives and a qt is the sole place I'd expect to see a burn happen. can you post a pic of the setup at least so we can see it, try and capture the red areas/ there's a thread I wanted to find evidence of burns in so that people cycling a reef can see how hard it is to get a burn from a display, and what that burn looks like.

I can't really take much better photos right now since the walls are plastic and have no clarity, even in these really low quality photos the redness on the gills is apparent...

 

[Stelioshah]

Water changes and adding a bacterial additive to the qt will help a ton. Some fritz turbo start and a bag of seachem matrix in the filter works wonders. All of my qt have matrix and get doses of turbo start. As long as you dont use an antibiotic the bacteria will persist.

I was already adding bacteria daily and I had been adding bacteria daily for 3 weeks before adding the fish and had cycled with ammonia.. I added the fish fed 2 small flakes for 2 days straight and the ammonia spiked despite all my precautions.. Methylene blue helps to close the wound from the ammonia burn.. That's what I am asking if any one knows if methyl violet would be okay to use instead..

 

[Bucs20fan]

Does you qt have rocks in it? If you are adding bacteria to a tank with nothing but water and only filter padding in the filter the bacteria will not work. They are not free floating bacteria, they live on porous surfaces. If this is so, that is why adding bacteria has not worked for you.

 

[Spare time]

I was already adding bacteria daily and I had been adding bacteria daily for 3 weeks before adding the fish and had cycled with ammonia.. I added the fish fed 2 small flakes for 2 days straight and the ammonia spiked despite all my precautions.. Methylene blue helps to close the wound from the ammonia burn.. That's what I am asking if any one knows if methyl violet would be okay to use instead..

Which bacteria bottle out of curiosity?

 

[Spare time]

Does you qt have rocks in it? If you are adding bacteria to a tank with nothing but water and only filter padding in the filter the bacteria will not work. They are not free floating bacteria, they live on porous surfaces. If this is so, that is why adding bacteria has not worked for you.

Eh they can live in the filter in sponges.

 

[Bucs20fan]

Eh they can live in the filter in sponges.

Correct, but if this isnt an established qt and changes the sponges or filters weekly, there is no buildup or living colony per se.

 

[Stelioshah]

Which bacteria bottle out of curiosity?

I used microbacter 7, that's how I cycled my dt as well. In the qt I also added some media from my dt and did a small periodic carbon dosing to further boost the bacteria population.

 

[Spare time]

I used microbacter 7, that's how I cycled my dt as well. In the qt I also added some media from my dt and did a small periodic carbon dosing to further boost the bacteria population.

I would dump the whole bottle in personally, or get another bottle of purely cycling bacteria and dump that all in.

 

[Stelioshah]

thats very helpful to know, in narrowing down causatives and a qt is the sole place I'd expect to see a burn happen. can you post a pic of the setup at least so we can see it, try and capture the red areas/ there's a thread I wanted to find evidence of burns in so that people cycling a reef can see how hard it is to get a burn from a display, and what that burn looks like.

Here are some better photos:

 

[Stelioshah]

I would dump the whole bottle in personally, or get another bottle of purely cycling bacteria and dump that all in.

I actually had added so much bacteria, that there were noticable bacterial colonies on every surface of the quarantine, I had to clean a few days prior to adding the fish by removing the huge chunks of bacteria, I also added some ammonia after cleaning which got back to zero within a few hours. The qt has a small sponge filter, heater biological substrate and a piece of rock from my dt and some biomedia from my dt.

 

[Stelioshah]

My question still remains though, the burn has already happened at this point.. Is anyone familiar with methyl violet? The fish is totally responsive right now but I am afraid of infections.. Methylene blue is traditionally used in this case. Are there really any other solutions?

 

[Spare time]

I actually had added so much bacteria, that there were noticable bacterial colonies on every surface of the quarantine, I had to clean a few days prior to adding the fish by removing the huge chunks of bacteria, I also added some ammonia after cleaning which got back to zero within a few hours. The qt has a small sponge filter, heater biological substrate and a piece of rock from my dt and some biomedia from my dt.

Yeah microbacter 7 has some heterotrophic bacteria in it so that might be why. It would be odd to have ammonia burns then. Could it be Uronema?

 

[brandon429]

ammonia burns are so rare on the site I'll be amazed if anyone has an experience-based approach. Jay might

 

[brandon429]

that fish is tiny, low output rate of ammonia compared to a big wrasse etc

can we see the picture of the tank he was in when the burn happened/ties in the big picture view of the issue/and if anyone has meds they want to recommend it'll help them see if the burn was likely based in that specific setup. reddened gills alone can't prove it/flukes etc may mask it/but qt are the ones likely to see issues so that big picture is helpful in your fish diagnosis in my opinion.

 

[Stelioshah]

Yeah microbacter 7 has some heterotrophic bacteria in it so that might be why. It would be odd to have ammonia burns then. Could it be Uronema?

If I shine a light directly perpendicular to the salifert test I can definitely see some orangish color, otherwise the solution seems totally white to me, on the other hand a test from my dt would almost display no color even after shining a light. That's the only way I could see any visual difference between the solution color of the qt and the dt.. So I am guessing there trully is ammonia. I was almost 100% certain that the wrasse was a goner when I saw the way it acted this morning, I have never before seen a fish recover that way.