Sailfin Tang Mysteriously Drops Dead

[Kerbash]

Sup,

Looking to diagnose what happened to my sail fin tang.

Background:
A Desjardinii Sailfin tang, had him for three months, he was picked on originally by a half mimic tang, but they got along after 2 days, he has been eating fine, nipping at nori all day, accepts frozen food. No sign out of the ordinary. The tank is also around a year old, mix reefs, has one ritteri anemone and a few sps.

Timeline:
12:30 AM: Looks totally fine, swimming around
8:00 AM: Labor breathing laying on his side, still jolt up to swim occasionally but had trouble keeping his nose pointed up. So i moved him to a QT tank with some Furan.
11:00 AM: Laying on his side dropped dead.

Visual Appearance:
The only thing wrong seems to be white patches on the belly that was not there before.

Param:
Cal 430
Alk 8.3
Nitrate ~0
Phosphate ~0

Theory:
1. Anemone??? He has been hovering around the ritteri for the past few days, I was just telling my brother in fact that he has a death wish. Could the ritteri have stung him? But shouldn't he been eaten by the ritteri too?
2. Chronic: Some sort of chronic disease? I have never ever had any fish just dropped dead withing a span of 12 hours before. No clue what it could have been maybe a heart attack or something? Can fish even get a hear attack?

 

[UkiahTheTurtle]

Oof sorry for your loss. I can’t help but maybe #fishmedic can diagnose it?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Sup,

Looking to diagnose what happened to my sail fin tang.

Background:
A Desjardinii Sailfin tang, had him for three months, he was picked on originally by a half mimic tang, but they got along after 2 days, he has been eating fine, nipping at nori all day, accepts frozen food. No sign out of the ordinary. The tank is also around a year old, mix reefs, has one ritteri anemone and a few sps.

Timeline:
12:30 AM: Looks totally fine, swimming around
8:00 AM: Labor breathing laying on his side, still jolt up to swim occasionally but had trouble keeping his nose pointed up. So i moved him to a QT tank with some Furan.
11:00 AM: Laying on his side dropped dead.

Visual Appearance:
The only thing wrong seems to be white patches on the belly that was not there before.

Param:
Cal 430
Alk 8.3
Nitrate ~0
Phosphate ~0

Theory:
1. Anemone??? He has been hovering around the ritteri for the past few days, I was just telling my brother in fact that he has a death wish. Could the ritteri have stung him? But shouldn't he been eaten by the ritteri too?
2. Chronic: Some sort of chronic disease? I have never ever had any fish just dropped dead withing a span of 12 hours before. No clue what it could have been maybe a heart attack or something? Can fish even get a hear attack?

If you see the dots on the fish- they are from ich parasite and my best guess is fish was infected, and irritated and darted quickly due to irritation and crash into glass or other object. Same would apply to flukes and I do see a couple dots on the eye
Desjardini sailfin are by far one of the prettiest smtangs and sad to see

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Sup,

Looking to diagnose what happened to my sail fin tang.

Background:
A Desjardinii Sailfin tang, had him for three months, he was picked on originally by a half mimic tang, but they got along after 2 days, he has been eating fine, nipping at nori all day, accepts frozen food. No sign out of the ordinary. The tank is also around a year old, mix reefs, has one ritteri anemone and a few sps.

Timeline:
12:30 AM: Looks totally fine, swimming around
8:00 AM: Labor breathing laying on his side, still jolt up to swim occasionally but had trouble keeping his nose pointed up. So i moved him to a QT tank with some Furan.
11:00 AM: Laying on his side dropped dead.

Visual Appearance:
The only thing wrong seems to be white patches on the belly that was not there before.

Param:
Cal 430
Alk 8.3
Nitrate ~0
Phosphate ~0

Theory:
1. Anemone??? He has been hovering around the ritteri for the past few days, I was just telling my brother in fact that he has a death wish. Could the ritteri have stung him? But shouldn't he been eaten by the ritteri too?
2. Chronic: Some sort of chronic disease? I have never ever had any fish just dropped dead withing a span of 12 hours before. No clue what it could have been maybe a heart attack or something? Can fish even get a hear attack?

I would rule out the ritteri, I've never had them cause issues with stinging fish.

Sudden death in fish is pretty rare. Can you rule out that the fish wasn't breathing slightly fast the day before? Sometimes, rapid breathing is tough to see at first, and then, when it becomes obviously too fast, it may be too late.

Its probably too late now, but I always give recently dead fish a FW dip to look for larger fluke parasites. I also have a microscope, so I'll do a skin scrape and gill clip.

All I can suggest is watch the other fish very closely for signs their breathing rate is increasing.

Jay

 

[ReefHunter006]

Did you do any work in the tank in the last 5 days prior to the death that would have stirred up the detritus, even in small amounts?

In my experience when I kick up detritus in my frag tank it will cause an internal uranema outbreak that is pretty lethal. I had to stop stocking on of my frag tanks because of it. Sensitive fish will usually show the tell tale red sore, but clowns and the such seem to be impacted internally without much warning. I finally figured it out after looking for the cilia in my microscope at my recent losses.

 

[Kerbash]

If you see the dots on the fish- they are from ich parasite and my best guess is fish was infected, and irritated and darted quickly due to irritation and crash into glass or other object. Same would apply to flukes and I do see a couple dots on the eye
Desjardini sailfin are by far one of the prettiest smtangs and sad to see

Yeah Im pretty bummed out, and no ich no fluke no nothing. The white dots in the pictures are undissolved meds, I stirred the water around and it came right off.

I would rule out the ritteri, I've never had them cause issues with stinging fish.

Sudden death in fish is pretty rare. Can you rule out that the fish wasn't breathing slightly fast the day before? Sometimes, rapid breathing is tough to see at first, and then, when it becomes obviously too fast, it may be too late.

Its probably too late now, but I always give recently dead fish a FW dip to look for larger fluke parasites. I also have a microscope, so I'll do a skin scrape and gill clip.

All I can suggest is watch the other fish very closely for signs their breathing rate is increasing.

Jay

Dang I should have waited to bury him, I didnt know you can do an autopsy on a fish.

Did you do any work in the tank in the last 5 days prior to the death that would have stirred up the detritus, even in small amounts?

In my experience when I kick up detritus in my frag tank it will cause an internal uranema outbreak that is pretty lethal. I had to stop stocking on of my frag tanks because of it. Sensitive fish will usually show the tell tale red sore, but clowns and the such seem to be impacted internally without much warning. I finally figured it out after looking for the cilia in my microscope at my recent losses.

You know I actually did have detritus stirred up the last night, thats why I saw him at midnight, he was just swimming around, and I was adding some small amount of sand to a bare patch thats been collecting detritus. Do the uranema outbreak kill instantly? Like in a couple of hours? How do you prevent something like that?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Yeah Im pretty bummed out, and no ich no fluke no nothing. The white dots in the pictures are undissolved meds, I stirred the water around and it came right off.


Dang I should have waited to bury him, I didnt know you can do an autopsy on a fish.


You know I actually did have detritus stirred up the last night, thats why I saw him at midnight, he was just swimming around, and I was adding some small amount of sand to a bare patch thats been collecting detritus. Do the uranema outbreak kill instantly? Like in a couple of hours? How do you prevent something like that?

Dont see signs of uronema and which is often progressive

 

[ReefHunter006]

Dont see signs of uronema and which is often progressive

I disagree in this particular scenario, the only way to know that with any level of certainty is a microscope. We don’t know what was present before and after as well as when. It is a disease that has the ability to overwhelm the animal quickly. I’ve come across atleast 7 fish that had no signs of sores, but the cilia present in high amounts on freshly deceased fish.

 

[ReefHunter006]

Yeah Im pretty bummed out, and no ich no fluke no nothing. The white dots in the pictures are undissolved meds, I stirred the water around and it came right off.


Dang I should have waited to bury him, I didnt know you can do an autopsy on a fish.


You know I actually did have detritus stirred up the last night, thats why I saw him at midnight, he was just swimming around, and I was adding some small amount of sand to a bare patch thats been collecting detritus. Do the uranema outbreak kill instantly? Like in a couple of hours? How do you prevent something like that?

It’s hard to tell you the time frame because all I have is my experiences. I’m not sure there is anyway to stop it from spreading.

Less than 24 hours seems very quick to me. I’ve seen death as soon at 2 days but obviously have no control to verify that against, so take it with a grain of salt.

The disease can kill fish very quickly, and while a lot of fish can live with it in the system and possibly present to small amounts on them, it has been my experience that any of the pest in the detritus seem to overwhelm the fish.

 

[Kerbash]

@vetteguy53081 What is sudden death in fish? What is the cause of it?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Sudden death is unpredictable but can be caused by many factors not limited to but can be caused by:
Stress
Poor water quality
Low oxygen
Elevated no3 /no4 or spikes
Stray voltage
Internal issue
Gill issues
Elevated temperature
Salinity issues
Aggression
Ph issues

 

[Kerbash]

Sudden death is unpredictable but can be caused by many factors not limited to but can be caused by:
Stress
Poor water quality
Low oxygen
Elevated no3 /no4 or spikes
Stray voltage
Internal issue
Gill issues
Elevated temperature
Salinity issues
Aggression
Ph issues

Hmmmm, honestly this is why I dont like fish only got 5 (now 4) in my 300 gallon tank. Ive always been really unsuccessful with fish, try to add a wrasse a couple of months ago and never saw him again. Fish seems to always be a coin flip survival for me for some reason. Never got any of these unsolved mystery/problem in coral...

I think Im gonna stay away from getting more fish for a year at least, this was a very traumatizing experience.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I disagree in this particular scenario, the only way to know that with any level of certainty is a microscope. We don’t know what was present before and after as well as when. It is a disease that has the ability to overwhelm the animal quickly. I’ve come across atleast 7 fish that had no signs of sores, but the cilia present in high amounts on freshly deceased fish.

Uronema-like organisms are often free living, most of the time they just feed on bacteria. Nobody knows how/free some becoming inter-cellular in fish tissue. Certainly it seems plausible that stirring up the detritus where they live and then the fish ingesting them could be a route for this. Microscopes are of course vital in identification of these. However, Uronema kills fast, but not that fast.

There are many Scuticociliates that are not pathogenic, just seeing them on a fish is not always indicative of cause of death. When I started doing necropsies at the Shedd Aquarium back in the 1980's, I was logging up a huge number of "Uronema" diagnoses. My curator kept telling me I was wrong, but I told him, I can see the fish are covered in ciliates. Finally, he had me tie a dead smelt on a string in a tank. When I retrieved it after a hour or so, it also had "Uronema"(grin). Ever since then, unless I know the fish did not rest on the substrate after it died, I disregard any motile ciliates that I see.

Jay