Sterbai spinning uncontrollably and ragged fins

[jamesleagas]

Hello, for a good while now I've been having issue with my sterbai, basically ever now and then I've noticed one fish in particular but also one or two others will spin very fast uncontrollably, then fall to bottom of the tank on its side. Then returns to normal. (Behaviour wise)

This one fish in particular also has rugged fins too. I'll post Params below

Temp 28c
Ph 7.3
Kh1 (buffered with coral sand in sump to stabilise ph)
Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 10-30ppm usually the lower
Water changes used to be large daily 60% but now 10% daily clean up and 50% weekly

Roma 240 tank with sump filtration and natural river sand (jbl)
Tank has juvi angel fish, rummy nose tetra, couple ancistrus and a pair of Rams

Few Amazon swords some root and bog wood

Treated with protozyn recently, any help and suggestions much appreciated. This has been going on for about 2months now.

[bekateen]

Hi jamesleagas,

Sorry to hear about your sterbai; in general, such behaviors are never a good sign. Have you read this thread (viewtopic.php?f=6&t=41953) and the others which can be found through it?

Good luck, Eric

P.S. How are your apithanos doing?

[jamesleagas]

Thanks for the reply. Yes I've read all I can find on here, doesn't seem to be a remedy.

I've made the decision to cull the fish worse affected.

Very strange tho, other than the little 30second episodes it behaves relatively normal.

(I will cull using clove oil to euthanase humanly) purely to put it from its misery and decrease risk for the other fish.

Then I will up water change for a while to ensure best health of the others. They seem fine tho, they were laying eggs today.

My apithanos are doing great. Collected a new tank to add to my rack so I can create species only for them. Make sure they get all the food and don't have to compete for it lol

Desperately trying to source more tho

[PabloG]

Don't euthanase humanly, euthanase fishely.

[jamesleagas]

I suspect it's something parasitic causing it. What's the best broad range parasitic treatment for corys?

[jamesleagas]

The fish posted above sadly died the same day I was going to cull it. I took a slime sample from the fish and put under the scope, also scoped the actual fish and took gill scrape best I could. Haven't found any external parasites of any kind. I think it was perhaps from when I had them with discus and they was eating lots of high protein food like beef heart. Perhaps caused issue of a internal nature

[bekateen]

Sorry for your loss. I think your efforts to search for causative agent are about as thorough as I've heard of other hobbyists using before (short of having your own personal microbiology lab).

The fact that spinning is triggered leads me to expect that the causative agent is affecting the brain. This would not preclude the pathogen from also being visible on skin, gills, or in gut, but I suspect a simple infection in any of these latter regions wouldn't automatically trigger a neurological problem; by the time the fish are spinning, the disease has probably progressed from a skin or gill infection to a systemic one (or if it is a gill/skin parasite like ich, then it has led to such severe stress that other systems are compromised).

If you are scientifically inclined, here are a few papers you might be interested in:

1. Brain-encysting parasites affect visually-mediated behaviours of fathead minnows
2. FISH VETTING ESSENTIALS
3. Megalocytivirus Infections in Fish, with Emphasis on Ornamental Species

Cheers, Eric

[jamesleagas]

the good news is all the others seem fine, so atm i suspect that only the 2 where effected. it seems like it was a brain issue perhaps as the juvi affected had a lump between the eyes. picture to follow

[jamesleagas]

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[Jobro]

Sorry for digging up this old thread now, but I would like to add a similiar experience i had not so long ago.

I had 10 C. Habrosus in a tank with some dwarfcichlids. The tank was allready running for like 6 months when I noticed a bad smell and found some bogwood having a white layer of bacteria or something else on it. I removed the wood and thought I was done with it. Some days later I found one of the habrosus females spinning around like a little helicopter. I assummed the water was bad and so I moved the fish into another, very well running tank. very clean. good filtration. used for growing up dwarf cichlids before. The habrosus female kept spinning now and then. After some days she was just swimming around like nuts, bumping into everything head on. And other females started to behave te same. This kept going on for like 2-3 weeks. Some of them dying. But only females. I allready gave up hope and was sure they would all die at some point. I couldn't really stand watching them anymore and so I stopped looking in there. No feeding, no waterchanges, nothing. For like 2 weeks. After that the last spinners died and all that was left were 4-5 males and 1 female. I guess I lost at least 4 females.

No idea what exactly happened

The remainig fish were fine and healthy. I started doing regular weekly waterchanges again. But almost no feeding was done.
Two more weeks had passed when I noticed something tiny swimming in front of the "mattenfilter". I had baby C. habrosus in the tank.
I found the remaining female spawning every now and then. She keeps doing that for like 2 months now. I'm pretty sure there are 40+ young C. habrosus in the tank by now.
I only feed half a pleco wafer every day. Seems to be plenty food in there anyway.