My Fishes Are Very Sick.. Brooklynella & Whitespot

[zeo]

Hi guys,

Last couple of weeks have been a nightmare for me. I've currently lost 7 fishes in total and seems to be a losing battle.

I started posting for help on UR forum, but hope some of you can offer any advice.

http/www.ultimatereef.net/forums/showthread.php?t=245722

The diagnosis has thought to be a mixed ailment of Brooklynella and bouts of white spot.

Feel free to post here, as I'll be checking both forums daily for any and all advice.

Treatment wise: I've been using a course of Actiflavin 7.5mls daily. I've already used a 3 day course of eSHa Oodinex for the white spots (but doesnt seemed to have helped at all). I've also doseing the fish with metronidazole soaked in their food for last 3 days.

a full indepth dairy of the events are in the link above - starting from day one.

 

[Colin_T]

metronidazole won't do anything to whitespot or brooklynella.

Luckily enough whitespot and brooklynella can both be treated with the same medication. Formaldehyde, acriflavine & malachite green. If you add copper to that you will kill pretty much anything on the fish.
You need to treat whitespot for at least a week, preferably 2 weeks. And brooklynella needs to be treated for at least a week. Unfortunately the medication cannot be used in a coral tank so you have to get a quarantine tank to treat them in.
Brooklynella is common on newly imported clownfish but is normally not an issue unless the fish are stressed and overcrowded.

The picture of the chromis indicated it had a bacterial infection. Chromis often develop it from rough handling. It spreads rapidly among other damsels in the tank and is difficult to treat in a coral tank.

You can use a plastic storage crate as a quarantine tank. Have an airstone bubbling away in it and treat the fish in there. Don't feed them much while you are treating and keep an eye on the water quality. A couple of weeks in the quarantine tank should clear up the problem on the fish and the whitespot will die off in the display tank without a host.
You can drain and refill the display tank while the fish are being treated in the quarantine. This will remove excess nutrients and clean the water up for the fish.

 

[zeo]

Thanks mate,

I'll try doing that ASAP.

 

[zeo]

How long would it take for the infections in my display to completely die out (with no fishes in the tank)?

 

[Colin_T]

about 1 week but if you can leave it for 2 weeks that would be great

 

[zeo]

Hi mate,

I've QT all the remaining fishes today (down to 5 as of this afternoon). Big clear plastic transport box. 1 heater, 1 air pump with stone and a cheap air driven sponge filter. I've also left a few plastic flower pots in the tank for the fishes to hide in and about.

Anyways...

I went to my LFS today to get the medication you recommened.

After explaining to the main lfs guy about the brooklynella and whitespots (the kind that lasted only a few hours each time it popped up) he explained to me from exp that the white spots I was describing arnt true white spots but some kind of fungus.

He has advised me to run a course of something called Pointex in my QT (but no lights as its photosensitive). What do you think of this medication?

Active ingredents include coppersulphate, alkano-lamine, & aquadestad.

Apparently this should help with the brooklynella, and the white spots aswell as kill off any other infections affecting the fishes. (heres hoping anyway).

He also advised me to use something called exodin in my display tank (its invert friendly) but should help with killing off the infections left in the tank.

 

[Colin_T]

The sponge filter won't have any beneficial bacteria in it so keep the feeding right down to a bare minimum while the fish are in the tub. Better still don't feed them while they are in there. If you start feeding them the ammonia levels will go up and stress or even kill the fish.

Fungus is white and fluffy and sticks up a couple of mm from the fish. It stays on the fish until it dies or is wiped off.

Whitespot should stay on the fish for a few days before falling off and multiplying in the gravel Then it hatches out and spreads all over the fish again, (covering them in more white spots for another few days).

Never heard of Pointex but copper sulphate will kill whitespot but not brooklynella. I don't know what the other two ingredients do. sorry.
Medications that treat costia, chilodonella and trichodina in freshwater fishes will also treat brooklynella.

I would try not to put exodin in the display tank if you can help it. I haven't heard of it either but I prefer not to medicate coral tanks at all. Every medication I have used in a coral tank has done damage to some of the corals regardless of the fact they all stated they were coral and invert safe.
The whitespot parasites will die after a couple of days without a host and the brooklynella parasites should as well. And if you do a big water change after a week you will remove the majority of the remaining pathogens.
However, if you do want to try the exodin then be careful about measuring the tank volume. Any rock will displace water and so will corals.

To work out the volume of water in the tank
measure Length x Width x Height in cm
divide by 1000
equals volume in litres

When measuring the height, measure from the top of the gravel to the top of the water level. You can remove the rocks and corals before measuring the height or estimate how much water has been displaced by the rocks.

Remove carbon from the filter before treating otherwise it will absorb the medication out of the water

 

[SkiFletch]

about 1 week but if you can leave it for 2 weeks that would be great

I disagree, ich can lay dormant for a month easily.

To the OP, IMO the only good treatments for ich are Copper OR Hyposalinity in quarantine, never both. I prefer hyposalinity since it is much simpler to use. Copper has to be monitored and appropriately dosed multiple times per day (must be kept 0.20-0.30ppm to work) which makes it a little bit of a pain to treat with. Hyposalinity however, slowly bring it down to 1.009sg and leave it there for at least a week AFTER fish become symptom-free. Then once that week is up, slowly bring it back up to wherever you run your sg. By then, about a month should have gone by and the display and QT'ed fish should both be ich-free.

Worked for me...

 

[zeo]

Last chromis dead. 3 left

I'm just gonna assume the last 3 will die too sooner or later.. at this point dont really care too much as all I've got left is 2 damsels and one coward watchman goby..

In regards to my main display.. Is there any chance the infections/bacteria/diseases could survive without fishes for more then 6 weeks? Can they live on LR/shrimps/crabs/anemones or urchins?

Or is it better I do a complete complete washdown with bleech on tank, rocks (I know this will kill LR) and gravel..?

 

[SkiFletch]

Parasites like these will most likely be dead after 6 weeks with no fish to host. They cannot host inverts. They can lay dormant for some time and there's a lot of oppinions as to what that time frame is... I can tell you that after my display tank had Ich and was left fish-less for 8 weeks, the fish did not get ich upon returning. Just my experience.