Unknown Infection/disease

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Jackiee

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It's gonna be a long one, so be patient to read!
 
It's been a long time since I've posted on here because for the past 3 years or so, my 100 gallon tank has been perfectly fine, no issues.. Except for now! So here I am, back in action!
 
First of all, tank size.. 100 gallon. Inhabitants.. 2 female jack dempseys, 2 blood parrots, 1 severum, 1 red devil, 1 small rescued Oscar who has remained small due to stunted growth from his previous owner, and a sailfin leopard pleco.
Some say this is overcrowded, however I have never had any issues between the compatibility of the fish or my water parameters..
 
I have one Fluval 304 canister filter under the tank, and two other filters hanging off the back of the tank that include a Whisper 60 power filter and a Marineland Hot Magnum.. 
 
Last week I took apart my Fluval 304 canister filter to clean it because I hadn't cleaned it in a year.. (I slacked, I know), but I clean my other two filters (with dechlorinated tap water by using Prime) fairly regularly, every couple months, to keep them flowing well and get rid of any leftover waste/food that they happen to suck up. I also replace the carbon in the Whisper 60 power filter cartridges every few cleanings.. And this has been working for me for the longest time.
 
Back to my point.. I cleaned/dumped out my canister filter last week for the first time in a long time (it was filthy inside, I cleaned everything in it with dechlorinated tap water using prime as well)... After this was complete, I started the filter back up. It had much, much better flow than before now that it was clean. Of course it blew out some junky water for a second when first turned on (as per usual), I then filled the tank the rest of the way up with tap water dechlorinated with Prime. It was low from evaporation.. 
 
I tested my water right after I cleaned the filter and added water to the tank, my ammonia was between 0-0.25ppm (but my tap water has ammonia in it so this tends to be normal after I add water), my nitrites were 0, my nitrates were about 20ppm..
 
The thing is, there was a water main break on my street.. As well as a sewage line break around the same time. 5 days prior to me doing all this to my tank.. My entire street went on a "boil order" for only 2 days and all was supposed to be fine for us to use the water afterwards... 
 
But who knows what they put into the water to "disinfect" it as a precaution, but almost immediately after I cleaned my canister filter and filled the tank up the rest of the way with dechlorinated water from the tap, a couple days later, my largest Jack Dempsey started showing signs of flashing. 
 
She was rubbing herself up against the heater. I've seen her do this at very random and very seldom times before when she would have an itch here or there, but this wasn't the same. It was much more frequent and she started doing it on other objects in the tank as well, like the driftwood even flipping upside down to do so.. I know a lot of the times this can be a sign of ich or some other irritant, but I looked at her closely and couldn't see anything physically wrong with her. 
 
I then began to noticed my Pleco's belly was starting to look sunken in, even though he was getting adequate food. He also started going to the surface of the water to gulp air quite often. This isn't very normal for him at all. His color also was changing to a mottled/discolored look which indicates stress. I very closely looked at him and seen very tiny white dots on him, but there were only maybe 3.. Same for my jack dempsey who was flashing. Barely noticed a couple specs on her but nothing major.. Not covering him or her in an outbreak like Ich usually does.. 
 
The next day after this happened, my smallest blood parrot started coming down with white spots (almost looks fungus-like) on his head.  Completely different from the small white specs on the other 2 fish. He also began itching and flashing to relieve the spots on his head..
 
Then my larger blood parrot got a similar looking white patch but only on her upper lip in her mouth. I have dealt with fungus infection before in a different fish tank, but this doesn't look exactly the same as what I seen before.
 
As far as the other fish, no visible signs of infection. No itching from any of them either.. I did some labored breathing from most of my fish though. Only the night before I went and bought medication though..
 
I have since treated the tank with Mardel Coppersafe (chelated copper sulfate) for ich, velvet, and external parasites, it says.. All of the itching and flashing from the fish has stopped since the medication has been put in the tank, and the few white specs I seen on the dempsey and pleco have seemed to disappear, but the fungus-like white spots on my blood parrots are still there and don't seem to be getting better.. And the pleco's stomach is still sunken. It may have improved a bit, but not much. The medication has been in the tank 3 days now.
 
I tested my water last night and my ammonia was now 0.50ppm, my nitrites still 0, but my nitrates had jumped to 80ppm?!... Idk if this is because I started adding more wafers for the pleco during feeding time over the past week.. May be from overfeeding? I didn't think it was that much though! Plus my fish themselves like to pick at the pleco wafers so they usually don't go uneaten.. 
 
I can't do a water change right now to lower my nitrates because I frankly don't trust my tap water at the moment.. Construction work is still being done on my street.. And if I do a large water change, my ammonia also jumps because my tap water has an ammonia reading of 4.0ppm... 
 
I've been dosing my tank daily with Prime as a short term solution to detoxify the nitrates and ammonia. I don't really know what else to do right now.. (Pleco's stress discoloration went away since I've been doing this) 
 
I bought Pimafix for fungal treatment in case the Mardel Coppersafe didn't complete the job.. I'm thinking there's more than one disease/infection going on here.. And it doesn't help that my nitrates and ammonia have spiked. 
 
I will include some pictures of the white spots on my blood parrot's head..
 
 

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Wow.  Have you seen the faeces of the fish at all?  Does it look white and stringy?  It almost looks like a bad case of Hex to me.  When it's severe, the holes in the head can produce a while, pus like substance.  Maybe you should have posted this in the "emergency" section, you might get faster answers there?  Ammonia at .50?  That's not good!  Did you wait a while after the wc to check it because I believe that Prime can still give a false ammonia reading due to the fact that it only 'locks' ammonia into a non toxic form, but doesn't necessarily mean that it wont show with a test kit?  Certainly the conditions you have described could have led to Hex in your fish, I would think...
 
OP - I have moved your thread to the Emergency section to help you get more views and possible answers for your worries.  I hope that someone can help you with this issue.
 
Your parrot has HITH, I suspect from the description of the flashing that your JD possibly has it too, you say there were a couple of specs on her, were these on her head or along her lateral line, this would be the main place. Although plecs do not suffer HITH as cichlids do, when understress from poor water conditions they will stop eating, gulp more air and will also get white spots/patches sometimes on the body sometimes on the fins. I have seen it many times with plecs I have rescued.
 
I appreciate you cannot do water changes with works going on with the water pipes, is there any way you could get water from a friend who lives locally, I know for a large tank it would be a right pain, but you need to get your ammonia down to 0. Daily water changes are needed to treat HITH you can get medication if it does not start to go down with water changes. Looking at the picture of the parrot the holes look like they have a fungal infection, its usually secondary infections in the holes that are the major problem with HITH. Primafix is an ok medication, but I would suggest Protozin in this case to tackle that fungus.
 
Hope this helps
 
Thanks for the replies..

This all just seemed to burst out of nowhere. The tank was perfectly content and all of a sudden chaos..

The blood parrot's head has not gotten any better since the treatment of the Mardel Coppersafe. The other fish have stopped flashing and I can't see any visible spots.

My pleco has taken a turn for the worse. His eyes have begun to sink in which I've heard in many cases means they are beyond help.. He swam past the intake on my canister filter as well and his sunk belly got stuck on the suction, so he now has an additional "wound" suction mark on his belly from this. I had to get him off.. I thought he was dead at first. And no there really isn't anybody I could go get water from, I would have to go to the closest grocery store and buy a whole bunch of distilled water or purified water to do water changes, but I would only be able to do about 25 gallons at a time this way..

I have been double dosing the tank daily with prime to keep the toxicity of the water away for now.

I do have Pimafix. The only other thing I have is Seachem "para guard". I don't know if this medicine would work better than the Marcel Coppersafe for the parasite aspect. I'm assuming I would have to do a water change before adding this new medicine though? I'm not sure about mixing them.

I have heard of HITH a lot especially with Oscars, but I've never personally had it on any of my fish. Until now that is.
 
My tap water alone reads 20ppms on the nitrate. So even If I did do water changes from my tap, to get the conditions in line I'd have to do a 100% water change. That doesn't solve the ammonia issue though. Unless my filters can convert that much ammonia quick enough for it to not be a problem..
 
I have moved my Pleco into a 10 gallon quarantine tank after doing a 100% water change on it. It is dosed with prime to detoxify ammonia and chlorine and a half dose of the Para-Guard. Hopefully this didn't stress him out too much and he can recover in the lower nitrate water.. His future is looking bleak right now so this is a hit or miss. I will keep doing daily water changes on his tank if he survives.

I will have to start doing large water changes on my main fish tank tomorrow to get the nitrates down for my blood parrot's HITH to recover. I'm thinking that my bacteria load can possibly process the ammonia from my tap
 
Could it be possible that my ammonia levels are reading so high from my tap water having extremely high amounts of chloramine? I've read something about this. What confuses me is that my ammonia reads high, my nitrites are giving me an absolutely zero reading, and then high nitrates.. I know ammonia converts to nitrite and then nitrate. If I have high ammonia why isn't this causing my nitrite to spike?
 
HITH can come on stupidly fast unfortunately but it takes weeks to clear up. It sounds like your tank is going through a mini cycle, you maybe over cleaned the filters or doing them all together killed off too much good bacteria. Do whatever water changes you can to keep it as low as possible. I am sorry but your plec does not sound promising :(
 
star4 said:
HITH can come on stupidly fast unfortunately but it takes weeks to clear up. It sounds like your tank is going through a mini cycle, you maybe over cleaned the filters or doing them all together killed off too much good bacteria. Do whatever water changes you can to keep it as low as possible. I am sorry but your plec does not sound promising :(
I have a total of 3 filters and I only cleaned the canister filter by itself. And I did this with dechlorinated water as to not kill all the bacteria. The other two I did not touch because I know they should be pretty well loaded with bacteria that would repopulate my canister filter so to speak.. A few days after I cleaned my canister filter, I did clean one more filter, my double sided whisper 60.. But I left the enclosed marineland hot magnum filter untouched. It contains bacteria rock and sponge.

I just don't get how this whole time my nitrites have remained at zero.

My plec is still alive as of now, he survived the night in his new tank and new water.. He is upright suctioned onto the side glass by his mouth. His eyes are not very badly sunken in yet, they were just beginning to.. Maybe he can make a turn around.. I hope!
 
Not sure what country you are in, but can you get a hold of some Metronidazole for the HITH?
 
Electric Warrior said:
Not sure what country you are in, but can you get a hold of some Metronidazole for the HITH?
I'm in the US, Midwest Illinois. I would have to call local stores. Unfortunately we have commercial pet stores such as Petsmart and Petco around my area and they don't always carry the types of medicine people recommend, they have a small selection. Is there a name brand that has metronidazole as the ingredient or would it just be by the name metronidazole?
I've also been told that it seems my Pleco is exhibiting signs of INTERNAL parasites. What would I treat him with if this is the case? Do they make medicated bottom feeder food?
 
Jackiee said:
 
Not sure what country you are in, but can you get a hold of some Metronidazole for the HITH?
I'm in the US, Midwest Illinois. I would have to call local stores. Unfortunately we have commercial pet stores such as Petsmart and Petco around my area and they don't always carry the types of medicine people recommend, they have a small selection. Is there a name brand that has metronidazole as the ingredient or would it just be by the name metronidazole?
I've also been told that it seems my Pleco is exhibiting signs of INTERNAL parasites. What would I treat him with if this is the case? Do they make medicated bottom feeder food?
 
Well, its an antibiotic so it's worth researching to see you if you can buy it over the counter there.  I know that in the UK, you need to get it from a vet.  It's supposed to work pretty well to treat HITH from what I have read, but I haven't dealt with that disease personally.  As far as you pled goes, when you say internal parasites, what are the symptoms exactly?  there are quite a lot of medications that are used to treat internal parasites, and many are available in pet shops.  How's your water supply doing now? Some more about HITH/Hex: http://www.fishchannel.com/fish-health/freshwater-conditions/hexamita.aspx
 
Electric Warrior said:
Not sure what country you are in, but can you get a hold of some Metronidazole for the HITH?
I'm in the US, Midwest Illinois. I would have to call local stores. Unfortunately we have commercial pet stores such as Petsmart and Petco around my area and they don't always carry the types of medicine people recommend, they have a small selection. Is there a name brand that has metronidazole as the ingredient or would it just be by the name metronidazole?
I've also been told that it seems my Pleco is exhibiting signs of INTERNAL parasites. What would I treat him with if this is the case? Do they make medicated bottom feeder food?
Well, its an antibiotic so it's worth researching to see you if you can buy it over the counter there.  I know that in the UK, you need to get it from a vet.  It's supposed to work pretty well to treat HITH from what I have read, but I haven't dealt with that disease personally.  As far as you pled goes, when you say internal parasites, what are the symptoms exactly?  there are quite a lot of medications that are used to treat internal parasites, and many are available in pet shops.  How's your water supply doing now? Some more about HITH/Hex: http://www.fishchannel.com/fish-health/freshwater-conditions/hexamita.aspx

His stomach is sunken, his eyes are sunken.. He has a wound on his stomach from getting stuck to the filter.. His underbelly looks TERRIBLE right now. He is no longer eating..

More work has just been started on my street AGAIN, had my water completely shut off all yesterday and for the next 2-3 days, we're on "boil order" so I definitely can't use the tap again..

The medicine you are describing is available to me at the local Petsmart. I am going today to pick some up.. Will dose my main tank with it.. There is only one fish showing signs of illness in my main tank now, which is the blood parrot in the pictures. Everyone else is fine.. And the Pleco. I'm mainly worried about him at the moment. Idk what to do for him. I just took pictures of him but I don't know how to post them in comments?
 
Jackiee said:
 
 

 

Not sure what country you are in, but can you get a hold of some Metronidazole for the HITH?
I'm in the US, Midwest Illinois. I would have to call local stores. Unfortunately we have commercial pet stores such as Petsmart and Petco around my area and they don't always carry the types of medicine people recommend, they have a small selection. Is there a name brand that has metronidazole as the ingredient or would it just be by the name metronidazole?
I've also been told that it seems my Pleco is exhibiting signs of INTERNAL parasites. What would I treat him with if this is the case? Do they make medicated bottom feeder food?
Well, its an antibiotic so it's worth researching to see you if you can buy it over the counter there.  I know that in the UK, you need to get it from a vet.  It's supposed to work pretty well to treat HITH from what I have read, but I haven't dealt with that disease personally.  As far as you pled goes, when you say internal parasites, what are the symptoms exactly?  there are quite a lot of medications that are used to treat internal parasites, and many are available in pet shops.  How's your water supply doing now? Some more about HITH/Hex: http://www.fishchannel.com/fish-health/freshwater-conditions/hexamita.aspx

His stomach is sunken, his eyes are sunken.. He has a wound on his stomach from getting stuck to the filter.. His underbelly looks TERRIBLE right now. He is no longer eating..

More work has just been started on my street AGAIN, had my water completely shut off all yesterday and for the next 2-3 days, we're on "boil order" so I definitely can't use the tap again..

The medicine you are describing is available to me at the local Petsmart. I am going today to pick some up.. Will dose my main tank with it.. There is only one fish showing signs of illness in my main tank now, which is the blood parrot in the pictures. Everyone else is fine.. And the Pleco. I'm mainly worried about him at the moment. Idk what to do for him. I just took pictures of him but I don't know how to post them in comments?
 


You have to upload the photos to photo bucket/imageshack/etc., and then copy/past the link in here.  I am originally from the US but I can't for the life of me remember any medicine brands that were sold in aquatic shops over there.  Do you have Esha over there?  It's generally regarded as a very good brand, and they make several different medicines for different diseases.  As far as the Metronidazole goes, definitely read up on how to use it because I know sometimes its in tablet form and it needs to be actually fed to the fish, therefore you have to crush it and mix into food.
 

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