My Bala shark is Spasming?!

[NoodleOfDanger0]

I'm putting the issue first and then the backstory so people on phones don't have to scroll so far to find my questions.

ISSUE: About 2 weeks ago, I saw him with his mouth open and thrashing like he was trying to get something out of his mouth or like he was gasping. I don't know if fish can choke or not but that's kind of what it looks like. I know fish can have seizures as well but this doesn't look like the videos I've seen as he is upright, not upside down or on the bottom of the tank. Maybe fish have seizures that look different just like we do? He does seem out of breath and surface breathes right after but then is completely normal. I've observed this 4 times now in the last two weeks and it's freaking me out. I know that his being stunted means he has a shorter life expectancy. I don't think this is directly related to him being stunted but I could very well be wrong. Is it a nervous thing as my last Denison barb passed away about 6 weeks ago? If it's related though, I would think it would have started closer to the time of the barb's passing. I was wondering if there might be anything I can do to help him not spasm.

Backstory: He is stunted. The original owner kept him completely alone in a 10-gallon tank as a "grow out tank". After almost 18 months he was still only 3 inches long when he should have been closer to 8 inches. He was moved into a larger tank with 5 much larger Balas, was picked on to the point that he was bleeding, separated again, and returned to the 10-gallon tank. Every time he was around another Bala shark after that, he would hide and refuse to eat.

I took him in knowing he would probably develop more issues as he aged. I got him when he was probably 18-20 months old and I've had him for over a year now. He is now almost 4 inches long and almost 3 years old. I've had him in a 75-gallon peaceful community tank where he schooled with and has outlived my Denison barb trio. He's alone again (as in doesn't have a school, there are other fish in the tank who he ignores) and I have been unsuccessful in finding more Denison barbs for him to school with but I am looking.

Please help! I don't want him to suffer, he's been through enough. He's survived ick and a mystery illness that killed 4 fish in less than 24 hours. He's a fighter but I don't want him to have to fight.

 

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Pictures of the fish and tank?
Did you add anything to the tank in the 2 weeks before this started?
What have you treated it with?

What is the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH of the tank water?

How often do you do water changes and how much do you change?
Do you gravel clean the substrate when you do water changes?
Do you dechlorinate the new water before it's added to the tank?

What sort of filter is on the tank?
How often and how do you clean the filter?

What do you feed the fish?
Do you add plant fertiliser or carbon dioxide (CO2) to the tank?


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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 or until the problem is identified. 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 them. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens.

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

Maybe add some salt if there's no improvement after a couple of big water changes. See directions below for salt.


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SALT
You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt) or swimming pool salt to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres of water. If there is no improvement after 48 hours you can double that dose rate so there is 2 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, Bettas & gouramis, loaches) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers, rainbowfish or other salt tolerant species.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria, fish, plants, shrimp or snails.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week using only fresh water that has been dechlorinated. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that. This dilutes the salt out of the tank slowly so it doesn't harm the fish.

If you do water changes while using salt, you need to treat the new water with salt before adding it to the tank. This will keep the salt level stable in the tank and minimise stress on the fish.

When you first add salt, add the salt to a small bucket of tank water and dissolve the salt. Then slowly pour the salt water into the tank near the filter outlet. Add the salt over a couple of minutes.

 

[NoodleOfDanger0]

I have been unable to get pictures of him while he’s shaking.
I have not added anything new to the tank in the last two weeks. The new fish and snails I purchased 3 weeks ago are still in their quarantine tank. The fish are due to be added in another week or two and the snails still have 2 months of their quarantine.
I treat with Stress Coat+ whenever I do a water change and with perfect ph or ph up or ph down and ammonia neutralizer whenever those are off.
If I have a sick fish, I normally separate it into a hospital tank and treat the hospital tank but the hospital tank has the new fish and snails who still have two weeks left of their quarantine.
I do a 30% water change every week and do a surface clean of the gravel with my siphon when I change the water and a deep clean of the gravel with all the fish removed every month or every other month depending on the water conditions and the gravel.
All the water conditions are where they need to be for a pH of 7.5.
New water is always treated before being introduced to my fish.
My filter is an Aquaclear 500 so plenty big enough for my 75-gallon tank but I will be upgrading in a few months when I move. The plastic surfaces of the filter get cleaned weekly to avoid slime getting pushed into the tank. Filter materials get cleaned/replaced monthly to allow for beneficial bacteria to remain and grow between cleanings though I do clean it with tank water.
I have tropical fish flakes for most of my fish, algae wafers for my snails & bottom feeders & suckerfish, and carnivore pellets for my Bala shark. They get bloodworms as treats monthly and cucumber weekly or twice a week. I have a cuttlebone in the tank for my snails to eat.
My snails and fish have eaten every plant I had in that tank so I stopped bothering with trying to successfully keep up a planted tank.
I do use a bubble strip for air circulation.

I have had this tank set up and it has been a functional healthy fish tank for about a year. I had a mysterious illness that sweep through the tank that killed four fish in 24 hours when I first brought my Bala out of quarantine which made me think he had carried it. When I first rescued a small polka dotted pleco with ick (he didn’t make it), I quarantined him with some of my new snails and they brought ick into the display tank after their quarantine time was up. This was how I learned firsthand that snails can carry diseases like ick into tanks which is why they should also be quarantined. Both of these instances were about 15 months ago and I haven’t had any issues in about a year. I did have a few fish die from older age and treated the tank and cleaned it appropriately following their passing. This is the first symptomatic issue and I don’t think it has anything to do with water quality as that has remained consistent. I most recently added new snails about 2 months ago after a 3-month quarantine (I'm paranoid about ick).

These two pictures are from about 4 months ago when my last Denison Barb was still alive and without my bubbles running to help the pictures come out better. My profile picture was from about a month ago when I found 5 of my 7 snails in a line right after feeding them.

 

[Colin_T]

When you do a water change each week, you should gravel clean part of the substrate rather than just removing the stuff on the top. If you do a 50% water change you can usually gravel clean half the tank. The following week you can gravel clean the other half. This way the gravel will stay cleaner and there will be less chance of diseases occurring due to gunk building up in the gravel.

The fish stay in the tank when you gravel clean. Removing them each month so you can gravel clean is stressful to the fish and unnecessary.

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You mention cleaning/ replacing filter media each month.
What do you replace?

Most filter media/ material should be cleaned each month but not replaced. If you replace filter media with new stuff, you get rid of the beneficial bacteria on that piece of filter media and can end up with ammonia or nitrite problems.

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Fish and snails normally only need 4 weeks in quarantine.

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The above mentioned stuff is unlikely to be the cause of the fish health issue.

The issue is normally caused by an infection and can usually be treated with big daily water changes, gravel cleaning and salt. If that doesn't work then use a broad spectrum fish medication that treats bacteria and fungus.

 

[NoodleOfDanger0]

I've done 4 weeks in the past for my snails and I still got ick in the tank.
I replace the carbon in the filter.
By deep cleaning the rocks, I mean removing the gravel and washing it. I remove my fish because my fish are dumb and will sit underneath where I'm putting rocks. When I do a surface clean, I just stir all my gravel with the siphon to make the gunk come out of the rocks and onto the surface and then shove the siphon around the gravel so that the gravel is cleaned all the way through but not washed.
I don't really think this is an infection as it should be impacting several of my fish, not just the one if it was. I have a fish with a spinal deformity as well and she's not showing any issues or symptoms like the Bala shark is.
Also, if you think it's a disease from a bacteria or fungus in the water, what is it? And why is it only in one fish when all the others are in the exact same water? I don't like to use treatments on my fish tank if I don't need to, especially since to treat him I'd need to add him to the quarantine tank and they are not deemed clean yet or I'd need to treat my display tank which is never recommended.