Gill Rot?

[smiles]

Hello, I'm new to this forum and pretty new to the hobby, but things have been going smoothly until now. I have practically no experiences with fish illnesses, so I'm calling on your expertise.

Late last night I noticed a couple of my tiger barbs acting oddly. I'll use the copy-and-paste template in the sticky to clarify:

Tank size: 20 gallon long
pH: 6.4
ammonia: 0.25 (added fish on Friday, suspect bio-filter is still adjusting, however with my pH at 6.4 the ammonia shouldn't pose a problem as far as I know)
nitrite: 0
nitrate: 0 (planted tank - between water changes and plant uptake the nitrate has yet to get above 5 ppm)
kH: 1
gH: (unknown, but my tap water is very soft, as evident by the low kH and stable 6.4 pH)
tank temp: 74 (F)

Fish Symptoms (include full description including lesion, color, location, fish behavior):
- fish staying near the corners with their nose pointed downward
- rapid breathing
- occasionally itching head/gill area on plants or rocks

Volume and Frequency of water changes: ~50% weekly

Chemical Additives or Media in your tank: seachem purigen, seachem flourish comp and excel, prime

Tank inhabitants: 7x serpae tetras, 5x tiger barbs, 1 pearl gourami, 1 sparkling gourami, 1 spotted cory

Recent (Friday 27) additions to your tank (living or decoration): amazon sword and cabomba plants, sparkling gourami, spotted cory

Digital photo (include if possible):

Additional details:
My tank is fairly well planted. The tiger barbs are the only ones that are constantly in the tilted position and breathing heavily. The other fish seem unaffected aside from occasional itching similar to what the barbs do - unfortunately I don't have another tank in which I could quarantine the barbs. There are absolutely no white "ich" spots that I can see. I've been meticulous about cleaning up dead plant matter and food, as well as keeping the filters appropriately cleaned. This tank is pretty young, just over a month since I stocked it, but this is the first major problem - it is cycled.

As the title suggests the only explanation I can come up with is gill fungus (gill rot). I've added an air stone, slightly increased water movement, and decreased the temperature by a few degrees since last night. I did a 50% WC yesterday (on schedule) and another 25% WC today since I noticed the odd behavior. If this doesn't clear up with water changes or gets worse, what should I do? I read that salt baths help, is that an option? What kind of medication should I look into? Is there a better diagnosis? Thanks for your opinions.

 

[snazy]

I would go with a large water change to remove the ammonia, regardless that you think at low ph it is not toxic. NH4 is the "liquid" form of ammonia so it won't go as easily through the fishes skin and gills in order to do fast damage, but it is toxic to the fish too and needs to be removed out of the water.
Flashing/iching, lack of energy, difficulty breathing are side effects of ammonia poisoning too, not only a sickness like ich or gill flukes.

Edit: As for ich, the spots on fish appear when the parasite has already been growing in the fish for a while, so spots really become visible after the fish has been sick for days or even a couple of weeks.

 

[smiles]

Point taken - even though ammonium is "less" toxic it still needs to be removed. If they're still showing symptoms some time after the ammonia is completely gone, then I'll worry about parasites/fungi etc. Thanks for the advice.

 

[afremont]

Point taken - even though ammonium is "less" toxic it still needs to be removed. If they're still showing symptoms some time after the ammonia is completely gone, then I'll worry about parasites/fungi etc. Thanks for the advice.

Is your water always that acidic? Does it start off like that, or are you using CO2 infusion? I saw someone saying that acidic water was somehow responsible for the tilting. I don't know exactly how that would be, but that was their claim. If your LFS water is just as acidic, then that's probably not the issue.

 

[Prime Ordeal]

So the barbs weren't behaving like this prior to the introduction of the new fish then? And has the itching of the gill area started on all the fish since the new fish were introduced?

I'm amazed you have stable pH as your KH is only 1! You must have some amount of phosphate in there for it to be stable that low.

Are you using a liquid test or test strips?

 

[smiles]

I'm using the API liquid test kit. My tap water is very soft - pH between 6 and 6.4, dkH 1 after gassing out. Once in the aquarium it goes up to almost exactly 6.4 and stays there. I'm using liquid carbon, not CO2 infusion. I did think to test the LFS water before I threw it out and its pH was 6.6.

The tiger barbs, tetras, and pearl gourami were acting "normally" as I knew before I introduced the new fish on Friday. Then, late Saturday night I noticed tilting and rapid breathing in two barbs, then by Sunday morning all 5 barbs were doing it, as well as occasional gill itching. The tetras are gill itching also, but not tilting. The gouramis seem skittish, but not showing any other symptoms, and the spotted cory seems unaffected. Sunday afternoon I tested my water and noticed the ammonia, which I will be removing with water changes as soon as I can.

 

[smiles]

I did a large water change (~75%) yesterday afternoon and got the ammonia down to well below 0.25 ppm, but not quite 0. I'm hoping my plants will suck up the rest of it throughout the day.

This morning when I checked the tank, one of the tiger barbs was on its death throes, and kicked it shortly thereafter. I wasn't happy, but at least I had a chance to examine it more closely. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything physically out of the ordinary to my knowledge. The gills were light pinkish/grayish, and the base of the gill fibers seemed slightly blackened, which could have just been because it was dead. The problem is I haven't been doing this long enough to know what I should be looking for.

What I don't understand is that all the profiles I've read about tiger barbs say they're "hardy" enough to withstand the cycling process.. so why would this fairly small amount of ammonia (or ammonium, rather) have such an effect on them? Even with the ammonia greatly reduced, the barbs are still panting like lizards and tilting their heads down, while the tetras seem much less effected. I know the damage is already done (if ammonia was the problem), but I would have expected at least a slight improvement. The gouramis and spotted cory are still very skittish acting. What's going on?

 

[fidjet2]

If necessary, you have to test more then once daily and more then one water change daily to keep ammonia at 0

 

[Prime Ordeal]

Well it seems obvious that whatever it is was caused by the introduction of the new fish. That only leaves two possibilities as the cause of the woes, the elevated ammonia or a parasitic gill infection.

As you rightly say the barbs are usually considered a fairly robust species so I wouldn't expect them to be suffering the effects of the ammonia to greater degree than the tetras and, anyway, 0.25ppm ammonia at ph 6.5 is a negligible amount of free ammonia (the toxic stuff). So I'm dubious about it being an ammonia problem...unless it's getting higher in between readings, for example.

But I think it's going to be a gill parasite problem and you should medicate the whole tank immediately before it wipes the whole lot out. I don't know where you're from so can't advise on specific meds, but you need one that deals with gill flukes.

 

[smiles]

I tend to agree. The ammonia has not increased since I first measured it, and it seems like it dropped since this morning, now very close to zero. From what I understand about gill flukes, they're kind of like fleas on a dog. It's difficult to eradicate the flukes from a tank once infected, but they can be controlled. (please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this) I also read that they're opportunistic, and stress caused by the ammonia spike likely caused them to multiply quickly.

I'm still not absolutely sure about this, so I'm tempted to try something like a salt bath before I start dumping medicine into my tank. Would the barbs handle a 5-10 minute salt bath (in a separate container), and if so what salinity should I use? Should I consider adding a small amount of marine salt to my entire tank?

Thanks for your replies so far. I really don't want to lose any more fish if I cant help it. Thanks for taking the time to help me out.

 

[Prime Ordeal]

If it is gill-flukes salt isn't going to help. You need a strong med to kill gill flukes and the longer you delay the worse it will be. By the time you've messed around with salt baths it could be too late for the fish.

 

[smiles]

Okay, I dosed Formalin 3. Do you know how long it stays active in the water? The directions say it can be dosed every 24 hours until symptoms subside, but does that mean it actually dissipates in 24 hours? Basically I want to know how soon I can put the Purigen back in (Seachem advises that purigen is removed before medicating) after I stop treating. Do I need to use carbon or something to remove the Formalin completely?

 

[snazy]

Sorry I can't answer your question properly. Normally with medications that need to be dosed every 24 hours it is good to do a small water change before each treatment.
The only thing that's I am just not sure from your initial post is how did you cycle your tank before adding the fish a month ago and how long did it take? Did the ammonia ever test 0, or did the 0.25 appeared after the addition of new fish?

 

[Prime Ordeal]

Have a look at this for dosing, times etc: http/www.koivet.com/a_formalin_for_use_in_tanks_primer.html

I assume, but hope you haven't, dosed it straight into the tank. If you have you can expect large ammonia and nitrite spikes because formalin kills the filter bacteria. Keep a close watch on the water parameters and change out water as necessary (replacing with water suitably dosed with replacement medication if necessary).

Also make sure you have very good aeration.

 

[smiles]

Sorry I can't answer your question properly. Normally with medications that need to be dosed every 24 hours it is good to do a small water change before each treatment.
The only thing that's I am just not sure from your initial post is how did you cycle your tank before adding the fish a month ago and how long did it take? Did the ammonia ever test 0, or did the 0.25 appeared after the addition of new fish?

I fishless cycled the tank using material from an established aquarium. The tank has been set up for about two months, but stocked only about a month ago. The fishless cycle took a little under a month thanks to the cycled filter media I used. My ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate has been 0 since I stocked the tank. The 0.25 ammonia only showed up after I added the last 2 fish.

I did add formalin directly to the tank. I thought about it killing off the bacteria but I'm not overly worried about it and here's why, if you're at all interested:

It's a fact that the more acidic the water is, the less efficient the nitrifying bacteria become, and the faster free ammonia is ionized into ammonium. Much below pH 6.5 the bacteria is already at 1/3 optimal efficiency, and most ammonia will become ammonium very quickly. (hence my early post about assuming the ammonia in my tank was harmless) Here's one source I googled that explains this in a little more detail: (Skip to "Autotrophic Nitrifying Bacteria and pH" ) I know it's still important to have my tank properly cycled.

My tank also has a good amount of live plants, which out compete the bacteria for ammonia anyway. I could guess that by adding those two fish, I slightly exceeded the plants' capacity to use ammonia and caused an ammonia spike. I've come to doubt that the bacteria is doing much at this point, especially since I have yet to read any trace of nitrate in my tank for a month (with ammonia and nitrite remaining 0 the entire time). I know of people who skipped cycling altogether, throw in a huge amount of plants and stock immediately, with no problems.

But I digress.. All I can do is watch and wait at this point. Thank you very much for helping me identify what was wrong with my fish to begin with.