emergency: fish dying randomly

[Cael Gallery]

I saw the lennardi yesterday, it got up around 1pm and swam around for a couple hours. As usual, it is completely spotless. No marks of any sort, no scratching/flashing, no heavy breathing and it ate mysis. I haven't seen it today, it has been in the sand a lot recently. When the ich outbreak happened, that fish and the hogfish were the only fish to never even have a single spot of ich on them.

 

[Cael Gallery]

@Jay Hemdal Assuming that my 3 fish survive and i keep the tank at hypo for 35 days, would it be sufficient to give any new fish a formalin bath to eliminate flukes before putting them into the aquarium to prevent reintroduction of flukes? because i don't have the time or space for a proper QT i'm going to do ich management but flukes seem to be a pretty big deal

 

[Jay Hemdal]

The coral beauty is dead. The bannerfish is still active and eating and looks roughly the same or maybe a tiny bit better than yesterday. The hogfish is hiding in a crevice breathing fast and it looks like it's slime coat is peeling off especially towards the tail. It's eyes don't look cloudy but it won't eat or swim around. The salinity is 1.013 measured with a hanna checker. I still just don't get it, if these are flukes why are my fish degrading so fast even through hyposalinity? I know the hypo is killing worms because there are a lot of dead feather dusters floating around the tank. I am so worried about the hogfish, that is my absolute favourite fish and now only the 3rd fish left in the tank, and they are so rarely available in australia. I have also dosed dr tims first defence since last night and turned the skimmer back on this morning. There is a bubbler running and both return outles (which are very strong on red sea tanks) are at the water surface creating a lot of bubbles. Though i still don't think there is an oxygen issue at all.

Hyposalinity knocks flukes off of the fish, but in severe infections, that leaves thousands of holes in the fish’s skin and they can then bleed out or develop secondary bacterial infections.

As I mentioned, it sounded to me like Neobenedenia is ONE issue, but there may be a second issue at the same time. This makes any treatment really difficult….

 

[Jay Hemdal]

@Jay Hemdal Assuming that my 3 fish survive and i keep the tank at hypo for 35 days, would it be sufficient to give any new fish a formalin bath to eliminate flukes before putting them into the aquarium to prevent reintroduction of flukes? because i don't have the time or space for a proper QT i'm going to do ich management but flukes seem to be a pretty big deal

Formalin dips are not always effective at removing 100% of the flukes. Also, Neobenedenia has sticky eggs and those are not affected by dips and then can be carried into the new tank with the fish, starting the infection up again.

Another issue is that formalin dips are rough on the fish - and the point where you are adding a new fish to your tank is right when the fish is most susceptible to stress. Perhaps a freshwater dip, while also not being 100% effective, would be safer for new fish.

 

[Cael Gallery]

Formalin dips are not always effective at removing 100% of the flukes. Also, Neobenedenia has sticky eggs and those are not affected by dips and then can be carried into the new tank with the fish, starting the infection up again.

Another issue is that formalin dips are rough on the fish - and the point where you are adding a new fish to your tank is right when the fish is most susceptible to stress. Perhaps a freshwater dip, while also not being 100% effective, would be safer for new fish.

Would really like to avoid freshwater dips, have done it on 3 different fish now and 2 of them died very shortly after

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Would really like to avoid freshwater dips, have done it on 3 different fish now and 2 of them died very shortly after

Any dip, used on a fish close to death, will be too stressful. Formalin is more stressful to those fish than a FW dip would be though.