Mouth Rot, Scarring, or Something Else?

[FerocactusLatispinus]

I have a breeding pair of angelfish. The female has been developing markings on her mouth for about three days now. I've started a 5/8 dose (2.5 teaspoons instead of 4) of Rid-Ich Plus every 24 hours; I started on Thursday, and then yesterday the marks seemed to be nearly gone; today, the markings have come back even more severely. I'm about to treat them again this morning. Could this be scarring, since I have seen the male bite at her dorsal fin very often (the tip never appears healed), or could this be mouth rot that has resisted the second day of treatment?

Water Parameters:

Nitrates/Nitrites = insignificant
Chlorine = insignificant
pH = about 7.0
Temperature = 76 F (24.4 C)

Note: there are a few watermarks on the glass here and there.

[CoryfanAad]

Don't understand why you used an Ich med, being certainly not Ich. To my believe it's fungal ot more likely an bacterial infection.

[uaru]

Your angelfish may have a hexamita infection that's causing hole-in-the-head disease. The pitting on her forehead is pretty characteristic of this, so the mouth/jaw damage might be another manifestation. There are other causes for this type of damage, so that's just a guess.

In my experience, angelfish are very susceptible even when water quality is kept high. Also, some angelfish seem to be more susceptible than others - for example, we'll have a brood of 200 fry, and 20 of them will look sick like this while the rest are fine. Maybe the ones that are getting picked on (and you mention your other angelfish has been nipping this one) are more stressed, and that's what's causing them to develop symptoms.

We usually treat hexamita with metronidazole. It's a pretty mild drug, so we tend to give it to all our fish in quarantine before we let them hit the main systems. (We're actually giving it to some of our newly purchased angelfish and uarus right now.) It should stop an infection from getting worse, but it might take some time for the damage to heal up afterwards.

Good luck, and hope she gets better!

[FerocactusLatispinus]

Thanks for the replies!

Sorry, I didn't mention that the Rid-Ich Plus medication also treats fungal, parasitic, etc. infections in addition to freshwater and saltwater ich.

Unfortunately, I don't have a quarantine tank and enough equipment to sustain one; I suppose I might end up having to put the poor thing down if that medication would severely, adversely affect the catfish, loach, and ghost shrimp. Do you think the Rid-Ich Plus treatment will work??

[Doras]

I'm not an expert, but i would increase water temperature to some 27-28 degrees of Celsius. Since from what i know, angelfishes like little higher temperatures.

[CoryfanAad]

Think uaru could be right with that diagnose . I think you can see scars / damage. I think it's better to get a specific med for that. Beautifull angel by the way.

[uaru]

I'm not sure whether Rid-Ich will help. We don't usually use it since it can be very toxic to some fish, like tetras (though angelfish seem to handle it well). The only experience I have with it is for treating ich.

As far as metronidazole goes, I haven't had toxicity problems with it. We don't have ghost shrimp, but our cherry shrimp tolerated treatment without problems. The clown loaches, cories, and L-cats were fine too.

[FerocactusLatispinus]

Thank you. Yeah, the treatment doesn't seem to be going anywhere; I just wanted to be sure before I added this morning's dose. I'll see if I can find this metronidazole.

It was my fault, but I had a real nasty experience trying to raise the temperature to help treat ich a while back (I had raised the temperature to 80 F overnight). I had no idea it had to to be done gradually, and I lost four fish to secondary bacterial infections: I'm just really hesitant to try temperature-raising, even though I now know how it should be done.

I tried using some aquarium salt yesterday to see if it would help. It was a terrible idea. I had added a total of 4 tablespoons instead of 8, the regular dose, to the bottom of the external filter. I checked back an hour later and found one of my corys stuck on the filter intake tube; I turned off the filter and it floated belly up a little ways, swam down, and started swimming counter-clockwise for about 30 seconds. None of the other fish seemed to be affected. I immediately did a 25% water change adding some Stress Zyme and Coat+ with the next dose of Rid-Ich Plus. They all seemed to recover quickly and became energized: tI fed them and they were really feeding, more eagerly than I had ever seen them before. My angelfish are always really eager to eat, but the sick angelfish literally jumped to get at the food before the other 3 angelfish could eat it all: five seconds after I put the flakes on the water, she jumped right out of the tank and I got her back in safely. I don't think I'm going to mess with aquarium salt anymore, so long as that cory is still there.

[FerocactusLatispinus]

I have the metronidazole, but I had no idea I'm supposed to feed it to my fish! How in the world am I going to do this?! Can't I just dump the whole canister into the aquarium and hope that the one angelfish'll drink enough water for this to work? If the others build up resistance to the drug, I can't do anything about it; the other 3 angelfish are just too competitive for food. Will the fish eat the powder plain? How am I supposed to get the medicated food into the fish before the medicine leaves the food when I feed it? Am I just better off putting her down or is it too late for the other fish too? How am I supposed to treat my fish now?! It's too late to try and wait for another order of some form of the medication to arrive. This is bogus. Would dumping the canister into the tank work?? It's the only way I can see this happening.

[uaru]

What brand of metronidazole did you get? Is it just metronidazole powder or food that has metronidazole in it? You can feed metronidazole food OR dose the water with pure metronidazole - both should work. I generally don't suggest feeding the metronidazole because most fish that need it won't feed quickly enough. In a situation like yours where there's just one sick fish, we just dose the tank water.

For 100% metronidazole powder, we dose tanks at 1/4 tsp per 40 US gallons. We do this every 24 hours for 10 days, changing the water every 3 days or so (but we change the water right before the next scheduled dose so the fish get nearly a full day worth of the previous treatment). BUT, some metronidazole products on the market are metronidazole mixed with some inactive filler ingredient, because it's hard to dose 1/16 tsp for a 10-gallon tank, for example. The medicine container usually gives a suggested dose for dosing the entire tank, but it sounds like this one doesn't?

[apistomaster]

Heximita is a good candidate although the symptoms may be due to other causes.
I use a combination of drugs for various internal parasites. Here is what I use for Discus or any of SA Cichlid or Plecos I want to clean up.
I use Tetra color Bits and nearly fill an empty Rx bottle(~2 oz).
To this I add about 1/2 tsp of liquid Hikari PraziPro, ~1/2 tsp 10% flubendazole powder and 1/2 tsp of metroniadazole.
This food absorbs the PraziPro well but I also add only enough water to facilitate thorougly mixing everything evenly.
The food is moist and saturated with meds within an hour and even better by the next day.
I can use this treated food up within 4 days easily and refrigeration doesn't seem to be necessary.
This concoction has served me well over many years.
I also recommend warmer water. 80 to 82*F/about 27*C.

You may find www.finarama.com forum to be useful.
Here is the link to our diseases and treatment discussions. http://www.finarama.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=8
I am one of the moderators there. Our focus is on Angelfish and Discus.

[FerocactusLatispinus]

Thanks! What I have is a 5 gram container of Seachem's 100% metronidazole powder. It has a built-in measurer and has the recommended dose on the label. I figured I might as well give it a shot at feeding them food medicated with it. With difficulty, I managed to get 2 shrimp pellets (soaked in a little medicated water in a separate container) to the affected angelfish. It says I'm supposed to do this once every 2 days. Hopefully something will happen sometime soon, but I don't know.

[FerocactusLatispinus]

She seems to be doing a little better, and she still found the strength to lay about 50 eggs. Sadly, I found Spots, my Corydoras agassizii, stuck on its side in a plant, not breathing; I quickly freed it and it swam around in circles and upside down for a long time, but this morning it recovered somewhat. It must have received brain damage from a lack of oxygen, since it doesn't swim upright all the time. It still swims upside down when it goes to the surface to get air, but rights itself as it goes back down. It is still eating a little and doesn't have any clamped fins, but is a little less active. I'm glad I caught it in time, though.

[coelacanth]

That also looks like the normal damage you get when Angels mouth-wrestle such as you'd expect in the lead up to spawning. I'd never seen them actually lock together, but they do bite and this can result in superficial damage.

[FerocactusLatispinus]

Odd you should mention it: I saw the Koi Angelfish and the female of the breeding pair going at it this morning! I have never seen them that violent before, and the Koi had its pelvic fins splayed wide out and the body was all tilted back; it was actually challenging the female and male breeding pair. Usually it would peck once or twice but would then be chased off under the driftwood, slate, or into the corner of the tank. The pair had had 50 eggs yesterday, even though the female is still ill; perhaps they have been getting more violent recently.

I found Spots stuck on the filter intake tube this morning, and I had to put the poor thing down. It was in really bad shape; none of its fins were damaged, but it was twitching and could barely keep itself balanced or even swim much at all. I used clove oil as the method of euthanasia.

[FerocactusLatispinus]

I hadn't seen any improvement for about a week with the treatment, so I left off treatment; I managed to sell the two smaller angels to my LFS. It's been about a week now, and the female looks like she's healing a tiny bit, but not much. Scarring hasn't been getting worse, so it must just take a terribly long time to heal.

[FerocactusLatispinus]

Her pectoral fins and mouth scarring are nearly all healed up. I'll try and get a picture of the male and the female. The male is 1.5x her size, and used to be 1.5" long when I got him.

[FerocactusLatispinus]

Here are some pictures taken yesterday of the breeding pair.

Male


Female