Whirly Disease or Swim Bladder

[jayyy_boiii]

I have a 3 yr old Rainbow shark. I believe it's a male but not 100% positive. He is refusing to eat unless handfed via a small syringe. I noticed this about 2 days ago when he was out in the tank spinning in a corner. I thought whirly disease or swim bladder but he is not visibly bloated and he spins in a sort of barrel roll fashion with his nose slightly up. As soon as i noticed I moved him to a breeder box and began doing daily soaks in methylane blue and malachite green. I started hand feeding him ground vegitables and ground high protein flakes. I don't feed tubifex. I notice no improvement in the past two days of monitering and soaks. If anything it looks to be worse. He spends the entire day twirling in the corner of the breeder box. He has no physical injuries other than a small sore on the outside of his gill. He also has been pushing bubbles out through his gills? There aren't any bubbles in his eyes or fins that I can see so I don't think it's GBD. Last I checked my tank levels were good, except for phosphates. None of my other fish are acting off. I did add a small school of lemon tetras a month or two back but they all eventually died off for some reason. I had 6 of them and all of them died within a week. Any ideas what could be going on??


Update:
Did an epsom salt soak, didn't do ****. He doesn't appear in distress but i'm probably going to euthanize him

 

[Byron]

To get things started before the experts in disease get here, it would seem the lemon tetra may have had something and they are gone and it has spread. Swim bladder is very rarely actually swim bladder, but usually one symptom of some other diseases which could be internal protozoan, water issues, and so on. When someone like @Colin_T or @GaryE get here they can counter me if wrong, but I am not aware of any benefit of soaking food in malachite green, something I would never use on a fish. Let's hope others have the likely answer. Listing your water parameters (GH, KH, pH, temperature) and conditions (ammonia, nitrite and nitrate) if you can test for these will help. As will some data on the tank and other fish.

Welcome to TFF.

 

[GaryE]

Soaking food in dyes? It's a harmful use of a good med, akin to giving a human insulin for a toothache. I would stop immediately.

Twirling like that is usually an infection internally, or a neurological issue. Our knowledge of what goes wrong with our fish is so limited I can only guess. Without knowing if it even is an infection, I can't suggest an antibiotic or a treatment. I've never seen a recovery from what you're describing.

Malachite green is a mineral derived dye that kills freeswimming ich parasites.

 

[Endlersendlers]

He wrote that he’s soaking the fish in malachite, not the food.

 

[GaryE]

Oops. Read too fast. My apologies.

It isn't typical of a parasite, so the dyes won't work.

The small sore by the gills says bacterial infection, most likely. I have several really good 'fish vet' type books, and I've read them. They've convinced me what we know about our fish and their illnesses is very little. The people with access to labs might have a shot, but the average aquarist has very little chance of curing anything. Water changes, preventative measures and luck...

I'm sorry to say that rainbow shark has a pretty small survival chance.

 

[Byron]

I agree with all what Gary says here, including my misreading of the "soaking," I was being called to supper!

I have for several years had a copy of an excellent book entitled The Manual of Fish Health, authored by four eminent biologists. Some are fairly obvious from the photos and descriptions, but the majority to me are not easily identifiable. There is really only one way to have healthy fish, and that is to exercise prevention as much as possible. The real value in this book is the detail in the first chapters about practices that do indeed exercise prevention--understanding the physiology of a fish and how being in water significantly impacts everything, and avoiding stress from so many sources that are preventable if we only research.

 

[seangee]

Agree with the others. I had this once with a group of glowlights. I could not find a cure and it got them one by one, occasionally spreading to other fish, and sometimes re-appearing days or weeks after I thought it was gone. It seems some species are more resistant than others but it can spread (I assumed the others may have eaten off the dead fish). I tried everything and in the end euthanised all the glowlights (including the ones that still appeared healthy). Never seen it since.

 

[Byron]

Agree with the others. I had this once with a group of glowlights. I could not find a cure and it got them one by one, occasionally spreading to other fish, and sometimes re-appearing days or weeks after I thought it was gone. It seems some species are more resistant than others but it can spread (I assumed the others may have eaten off the dead fish). I tried everything and in the end euthanised all the glowlights (including the ones that still appeared healthy). Never seen it since.

With this description, I am reminded of the two times I introduced "something" that had this as one symptom, the other being the fish one by one began dying. I knew a marine biologist on another forum then, and after she quizzed me thoroughly she suggested it might be an internal protozoan, there are many and this inability to swim is sometimes but not always a symptom. I treated the food with metronidazole, and after a couple days the deaths stopped. Being an antibiotic, it takes a couple days to start working with results. Twice I had unknown disease(s) enter with fish bought in a chain store, and both times this worked. This would not help the shark at this stage, but if this should begin appearing in other fish it would be a treatment worth considering.

 

[Colin_T]

Video of the fish spinning?

Normally when fish spin or barrel roll through the water, they have a bacterial, protozoan or viral infection in the brain and there is no cure. Protozoan infections in the brain are the most common out of the 3 types. These generally occur in tanks that have a lot of nutrients and protein based foods, and lots of gunk building up in the substrate and filter. The following might help but probably not. And stop adding chemicals unless you know what the problem is and no more Epsom salt baths.

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Test the water for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH.

Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge. This removes the biofilm on the glass and the biofilm will contain lots of harmful bacteria, fungus, protozoans and various other microscopic life forms.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week. The water changes and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in. It also removes a lot of the gunk and this means any medication can work on treating the fish instead of being wasted killing the pathogens in the gunk.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use the media. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens so any medication (if needed) will work more effectively on the fish.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration to maximise the dissolved oxygen in the water.

 

[jayyy_boiii]

we are going to euthanize him today in order to prevent spread to other fish. We are pretty sure it's a protazoan and can't really do much.