Wipe Out - Please help

[Daragh]

I have lost a number of 8 month old L066, Acistrus and aspidoras in the last 24 hours. I don't know they cause. The corydoras and baby angels in the same tank are unaffected.

In a separate tank where I transferred two plecs from the first tank to, last Friday, all the adult plecs (quite a few) have broken out in some form of white spot. The spots are more grey/yellowy than white and all diffent sizes. The rest of fish in that tank are unaffected also. There was no sign of whitespot on the fish that died in the first tank, but I assume the instances are related.

I videoed some alien nasties on the fin and tail of a freshly dead L066, see attached, there are two distinct sizes of circular bodies.

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCrfRQI4IgM

Anyone know what this is and what is the best treatment. I have added a diatom filter to the tank in the meantime, hoping to remove any free swimming organisms. I hve Esha Exit to hand if it is confirmed as white spot / ich.

All shots in the video are at 400x



Daragh

[racoll]

Sorry to hear about your fish.

Sounds like velvet (Oodinium) to me. A common disease which most people mistake for whitespot.

Wels Atlas I recommends a 14 day treatment of 0.04 mg/l malachite green, with warm water (33C) and no light (Oodinium are algae).

Good luck. I'm sure others will have dealt with this disease and can offer more specific advice.

[Daragh]

Thanks racoll, I think you are definitely right, I have read up on it and it is more like Oodinium than white spot. I ruled out velvet on the basis the spots were too big, but that's seems to be incorrect.

Unfortunately the progression has been very rapid since last night, so I hope it is not too late to avoid gill damage, that's assuming there are no fatalities among the adults. Potential for a vreding group of L066 and L333 to go South here They were only put together with some other pleco temporarily while I put in a new rack with two bigger tankd for the two groups ....

[grokefish]

Oh dear, thats bad stuff Darragh.
Deffinately not white spot, they are the wrong shape for "ich" anyway.
I would tend to agree with Rupert, but hope it's not, turn they lights off bump the temperature up and pray, velvet is a horrible disease to get rid of.
Here we go:-
Oodinium is caused by a dinoflagellate which vary in size and form from rounded to pear shaped 30-140 micro m.
Sound like your fellas....

Action A prolonged bath in Trypaflavine at a strength of 1g to 100l of water. Increase the temperature to 30 deg. For best results darken the tank.
Other remedies include copper sulphate 0.3g to 1000l of water, Quinine hydrochloride 1.5g per 1000l or a 3% solution of table salt.

I recently read that loricarids have their own form of "whitespot" which is in fact more yellow and different sizes. It mainly affects their fins and ventral region. Is this the case with these fish?
If so bump the temp up to 33-34 degrees for 3-4 days the fuckers will fall off so keep the temp up for another day to make sure you have zapped them.

I would contact Larry (Apistomaster) on this he usually has a trick up his sleeve for diseases.
Good luck

Matt

[Daragh]

Thanks for the the additional info Matt.

As no other fish is affected, you might be right about the "pleco" whitespot, I have not heard of that before. They do have spots around there heads too, so maybe not ? ?

The temp ended up at 90, hard to regulate those fiddly knobs on heaters, so maybe I will leave it there. The tanks are blanked out and I have treated with Esha, I don't have access to any of the other suggested treatments at the moment (apart from the salt), though Esha Exit claims to treat velvet and other spot diseases. I also stuck the diatom filter on for 6 hours this evening and added Esha again afterwards and the filter seems to remove it.

A positive sign is the they are not hanging around filter outlets etc and I lifted the cover this evening and flicked on one light, to look for bodies, and the plecs shot off in every direction, which I see as a good sign, sick fish do not tend for frighten so easily. Because of the temp I have added an 4000 lph at the surface and have teh spraybar playing down roughly and added a 1000 lph at teh other end. So the oxegen levels are remaining high.

I am keeping my fingers crossed, no deaths today at least.

Daragh

[grokefish]

By the way those L66 will happily live at 32 deg forever you know,with enough aeration and you may not have the problem again.

Matt

[Daragh]

By the way those L66 will happily live at 32 deg forever you know,with enough aeration and you may not have the problem again.

Matt

I know but with nearly 50 tanks, the Electricity bill is a BIG issue, especially as that tank is a 450 litre tank in an unheated room!! But you have a point.


Daragh

[apistomaster]

I agree that this appears to be Piscioodinium.
The treatment regimes suggested are all reasonable but the prognosis is not good since they disease is way ahead of you.
The low temps you have been keeping the L66 did not help. I would raise the temp to 86*F, Turn off the lights; Piscioodinium is also a photosynthesizing organism so cutting all it's routes of obtaining energy for reproduction is wise.
Normally, by the time the losses have begun, only the very strongest fish have any chance of surviving the treatments.
The earliest signs of infection will appear as a fine golden dust sprinkled on the fins and body but when it affects armored catfish, this early stage is very easy to miss. I also use about 1/2 tbs/gal in conjunction with the drugs. The salt seems to promote healing of the skin damage but the gils of the sick fish are also heavily infected which further stresses the fish and most likely is the actual cause of death.

Treatments will be most effective if carried out in a bare hospital tank but as said, I think it is too late to save all but the very strongest fish.
It has been shown that drug resistant forms of this disease have become common and treatments are less effective now than they once were but there are still no better treatments than the ones already mentioned.
I have not seen anyone do such a good job of showing the actual organisms infecting their fish before. That is normally invaluable information but at this late stage it is going to be a foot note as to what disease wiped out your fish. It is a difficult disease to diagnose early in the armored catfish. Most of the epidermal/gill Protozoan diseases that have begun killing armored catfish are almost impossible to reverse this late in the game.
The corollary question which I am anticipating is what should you do about the diseased tank once all the dying is done? Not much is necessary.
A fish-less period without the lights on and general good practices like normal water changes and temperature adjustments to the requirements of the fish you want to replace in the tank should be done for about 10-14 days. The new fish should be quarantined and conditioned for 4-6 weeks to assure they are in excellent health is recommended. I always treat for the common Protozoan diseases beginning on the first day because they are so hard to treat by the time you can identify them. I just use a malachite green preparation for this purpose for 5 days. Then use an anti-fluke med like PraziPro per manufactures recommendations. I also soak any prepared foods the fish are willing to eat in PraziPro and feed that once daily for 2 weeks in addition to any live foods you can offer. Live foods are among the quickest ways to restore the health of newly imported fish. One feeding per day of a live food can do wonders with new imports.
Then wait and treat any diseases that make it through the first treatments, if necessary. The majority of the other possible diseases will not appear unless the fish were in very poor condition when you received them.
Despite the devastation, it does not do much good to attempt disinfection of the tank. Nearly all bodies of fish containing waters have this and other common disease organisms present in there spore survival phase. Normally, healthy fish are quite resistant to infection. However, during this active and most virulent phase, extreme caution should be used to avoid cross contamination to your healthy tanks. No use tempting fate.
Disinfection is essentially the same as starting over and carries with it all the standard hazards associated with new tanks. Better to preserve the viable biological filtration and introduce strong healthy fish after a few weeks.

I hope I was able to help. Sorry about the devastation. I have been there and some still sting when I think about what was lost. You can not win them all.

[Daragh]

Larry, thank you for all the information. The latest update is no more deaths and I hope that I am not being to optimistic to think I might get away this time. The fish are looking more relaxed, no gasping, no hanging around filters and very few spots left. Although I am satisfied that it is not white spot I am still not 100% satisfied the it is velvet. I was most interested to read Matt’s (grokefish) mention of pleco only whitespot and I would love to hear from anyone who has anymore information.

This might be a bit long winded, but let me explain in detail what happened.

I was installing a new rack with 6 tanks, 2 70 US gall one for each breeding group or L066 and L333. The other tanks were 15 US gall for various fish. To get the rack built and in place I had to move 3 tanks:

X: 20 US gallon with 30 odd one month old baby angels & 1 young BN.
Y: 40 US gallon with 7 adult L066
Z: 40 US gallon with 6 adult L333

I had two mature tanks to move the fish to temporarily:

A: 120 US gallon with about 6 or 7 mixed adult plecs, 5 Barbus denisonii
B: 60 US gallon with about 12 corys and 6 aspidoras 4 semi adult angels, pair Herotilapia multispinosa, pair Kribensis pulcher. 20 eight month old L066

I moved 4 semi adult angels, pair Herotilapia multispinosa, pair Kribensis pulcher from B to A.
I moved 30 odd one month old baby angels & 1 young BN from X to B
I moved the adult L066 and L333 from Y & Z to A

When I moved the female krib in her cave to A two L066 hitched a ride unknown to me.

All was fine for about 5 days on Monday night Jul 28 I saw young BN dead in tank, on inspection I could find nothing wrong with him. A few hours later I found a young L066 dead and when I searched around the tank there were 5 more dead L066 and 1 aspidoras. Everything looked fine, water tested fine, I could see absolutely nothing on any of the fish dead or living. I did a 50% water change, crossed my fingers and went to bed after checking around all my other tanks and finding nothing.

Next evening July 29th I found 10 dead and 2 dying L066. Again the water tested normal and I could not find any marks on the fish. All of the other fish in that tank were acting normally including the young angelfish, no gulping clamped fins, nothing strange.

It was then that I found spots on the adult plecs in tank A and thought whitespot / velvet ? ? I examined one of the last L066 to die and posted video at the start of this thread and here we are now.

What has me totally confused is the disease seems to be exclusively affecting plecs, the aspidoras could have been a coincidence and nothing to do with the dead L066 and dead BN. The two L066 youngsters that hitched a ride to tank A are still alive. The kribs (now in tank A) have fry and even they are showing no ill effects. All remaining fish in tank B are happy as “Larry”, although I have treated that tank the same as tank A, i.e. Esha Exit, increased temp and blacked out.

If the two L066 that got across to tank B brought the disease with them, why have they not died. How come the adults caught it so quick from them? Why are none of the other fish affected? Why were the adults showing loads of spots of various sizes when I could not see a spot on any dead L066 even with a magnifying glass?

One last conspiracy theory I have concerns the little BN I moved from tank X to tank B, up to three weeks ago he was in a BN grow out tank with several hundred others – they are all still fine – however last October I went to a fish show in the UK for three days and returned to a tank full of dead bodies, about 90% wipe out and it was Piscioodinium then (at least I thought it was), you could clearly see the spots on most of the bodies. About 10% survived all albinos, but there had only been 25% albinos in the tank to start with. Could Piscioodinium (or whatever) have hung around in that tank until now, moved with the BN when I put him in with the angels, tank X, not pass it to them, but pass it to the L066 when I moved him to tank B. That’s what makes me interested in the pleco only white spot theory.

Sorry this is so long and confusing.

Daragh

[grokefish]

That is very confusing indeed, essentially it is a type of white spot that is peculiar to sucky fish. It is often misidentified as velvet and has a somewhat different life cycle to "normal white spot" the fish tend to hang around in corners, in the open at the end glasses and are unusually tame and constantly fan their paired fins this form of white spot has bigger spots, is very resistant to medication but thankfully can be eradicated/controlled with higher temperatures. I am not saying your fish had this but if they did the stress of the move probably allowed it to manifest itself.
Thats all I know and i think all there is to know about it.
Have you written off any other crustation like parasites such as flukes and lice?

Matt

[Daragh]

Just an up-date since the other day. Only two more deaths. Tank B where all the young L066 died also housed some corys and two died the other evening, two C Spectabalis - why is it never the easy to get ones that die? Anyway, all remaining occupants including the baby angels seem fine, temp remains at 88 and I still have the tank blacked out.

Tank A where all the adult plecs etc are was a sorry sight the other night, although none of the fish showed any sign of Piscioodinium anymore, they were very secondhand looking, clamped fins, loss of colour and a few of the L333 had frog like eyes - secondary bacterial infection I assume. Based on Larry's comments earlier I thought things would only get worse so I tried Organic Aqua - a South African product for maintaining fish without water changes etc. I have tested it before and found it worked, but prefer traditional fishkeeping practices, however I had heard some amazing stories about the health treatment (there are three parts to the Organic Aqua suite, I just used the Health Treatment, they can be used independantly, but it is recommended you use all three) so I added the stated does. Within 24 hours the fish were looking a bit better, but still very ill. I added Acriflavine at the standard rate. Almost 60 hours later the fish are looking strong, better colour, eyes returning to normal and moving about more naturally.

So I am still keeping my fingers crossed, that with the luck of the Irish and assistance on here, I might still have my breeding groups of L066 and L333 at the end of all this.

Daragh

[grokefish]

Whats happening?
Was there a wipeout?
Are they better yet?

The suspense is killing me!

Matt

[Daragh]

Matt I did plan to do an update, but I did not want to speak too soon.

The good news is that ALL the adult L066 and L333 and other adult L numbers are alive and seemingly well. I still have the heat raised and up to this morning still had the tank blacked out, but I uncovered one third today because it was stressing them out too much when twice a day I had to flick on the lights to see that all was well, they would torpedo around and tank like maniacs.

The other tank where it started from is fine too, even the baby angels are fine.

However, if you recall my conspiracy theory that this may have been caused by a small BN that I moved from a BN breeding tank initially to the baby angel tank and then moved teh baby angels and the baby BN to the tank with the young L066, where the BN tank had been hit with piscoodinium or similar at the end of last year? Well, that looks like it might have been the case as that BN tank was a wipe out. See photo. On August 7th I was going away for the day and at 6am the fish in that tank were fine, I arrived home that night to about 250 dead BN fry from new borns to 1.5 inch. There were 8 adults, three of which died the following day, the remaining five have been unaffected, one male has a newly hatched batch of fry on his cave!



There could have been no cross contamination been the first two tanks affected, this time round back to the BN breeding tank as they are in separte rooms and shared absolutely nothing - and anyway I have been doubly careful not to mix net syphons tubes or anything. I have my hands sore from washing them too

This leaves me with a few questions, could piscoodinium lie dormant in a tank for 10 months and how did it kill so many bristlenose in about 14 hours - it would not normally be so fast actiong - from what I have read and heard anyway.

Next trick is to get the L333 and L066 into their new tanks and get them breeding again

Thanks for asking.

[apistomaster]

The one disease that has been deadly to my plecos but almost always restricted to new purchases of fresh imported plecos and others in contact with them is Chilodonella. It has spread from the very sick fish to healthy fish and caused them to die. Unless you examine a scraping of the skin and/or gills it is difficult to identify it with the naked eye. I am able to tell without staining the specimen but staining with methylene blue will greatly improve the contrast and nuclei inside the bell shaped organism. 400X is plenty of magnification which most cheap microscopes can deliver.
Superficially, advanced infections do resemble Ich gone wild. There is an even thick mucous film covering the skin punctuated with hundreds of more obvious spots. A microscope and early identification is necessary for you to have a smidgeon of a chance of bringing it under control.
The same medications used for Ich and Velvet work but the response is painfully slow compared to treating Ich and meanwhile many fish continue to die.
I have never seen it wipe out healthy tank raised fish like your albino Bushy Noses before but it is contagious and by the time you can visually detect it it is already too late for about 50% of the fish based on my personal experience.

It is because of events like this that I have become much more cautious about buying newly imported Plecos. I used to feel comfortable with a 2 week QT period based mostly on my Discus and SA Dwarf Cichlid experiences but with the wild Plecos, I don't think 6 weeks is unreasonable before ever allowing any contact with existing healthy stock. With an optimistic 50% survival rate among infected fish, their high initial cost plus freight charges, buying wild plecos has proven to be a very expensive prospect for me and I have easily lost well over $1000 US to this disease and am not keen on dealing with it again. Cross contamination routes are almost infinite in variety so it is extremely difficult to avoid it occurring in a normal fish room no matter how conscientiously you try to avoid it.

For those of you who have never had to deal with this disease count yourself as being very fortunate. It is really more a matter of good fortune. Fish from dealers who do practice good QT measures never keep fish 6 weeks before they sell their fish and this is disease may be compared to playing Russian Roulette. Keep at it and eventually you will meet up with this killer and there is nothing in your past experience with Ich or fin rot that compares or prepares you for the devastation this disease can wreak. Sometimes conditions come together that creates the "perfect storm."

[Daragh]

I will have to read up on Chilodonella, it sounds a very nasty disease indeed.

Despite the loss of the young L066 and the BN's all are replaceable and if I get out of this with no more deaths I will consider myself to have had a lucky escape. Loss of the adults would have been 100 times worse.

Daragh