Firefish cloudy eyes -no flukes?

[Captain45]

Last week my firefish (only fish in the tank) started to get one cloudy and bulging eye. I thought maybe just a scratch considering only one was affected. A few days later the other eye is cloudy. She's hiding most of the day now and having a hard time finding the food when it's feeding time.

I did a 3 minute rodi dip and didn't see anything of note In the black dish I dipped her in so not really sure if I'm dealing with flukes or what. I haven't been the most religious on water changes but params are decent.

1.024
.02 phos
5 ppm nitrates
Calc 400
Ph 8.4
Alk 9

I tossed in the uv sterilizer today just for good measure. How do you think I should treat this, I'd really hate to launch the hospital tank for meds. Thoughts? Much appreciated

 

[vetteguy53081]

Last week my firefish (only fish in the tank) started to get one cloudy and bulging eye. I thought maybe just a scratch considering only one was affected. A few days later the other eye is cloudy. She's hiding most of the day now and having a hard time finding the food when it's feeding time.

I did a 3 minute rodi dip and didn't see anything of note In the black dish I dipped her in so not really sure if I'm dealing with flukes or what. I haven't been the most religious on water changes but params are decent.

1.024
.02 phos
5 ppm nitrates
Calc 400
Ph 8.4
Alk 9

I tossed in the uv sterilizer today just for good measure. How do you think I should treat this, I'd really hate to launch the hospital tank for meds. Thoughts? Much appreciated

As these guys are skiddish and like to hide, looks like remnants of an eye injury
Treatment for about 5 days in a separate quarantine setting will be Maracyn also called maracyn 1 which is ethromyacin

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Typically, one cloudy/bulging eye means an injury and both cloudy eyes means an infection of some sort. However, that is not a hard and fast rule. With one cloudy eye the fish can become even more skittish and might bang itself against something with its good eye.

Since feeding is being affected, I think you need to consider an infection. Flukes would have been at least reduced by a FW dip (you may not see them in the dip water without a microscope) so it could be a bacterial infection. That needs to be treated in a hospital tank, with a broad spectrum, gram negative antibiotic.

Jay

 

[Captain45]

Thanks guys. Do you think API's EM Erythromycin would be an adequate medication?

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Thanks guys. Do you think API's EM Erythromycin would be an adequate medication?

Yes, that's what I generally recommend for eye infections - but since we can never know what bacteria is involved, that is always a bit of a guess.

Jay

 

[Captain45]

Just bumping an old thread as I've been watching my firefish for the past few months. I never ended up treating as I wanted to see if it resolved on its own or got worse. Would it be safe to assume this was just an eye injury that's slowly healing? I want to move her over to my main tank with other fish but obviously don't want to bring any parasites with it.

This is her eye over time, appears the "cateract" of sorts is getting smaller with time:

Original cloudy eye. Sept 2nd




Sept 12th:



Sept 22nd



Today:

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Eye injuries can take quite some time to fully heal - 6 to 8 weeks. There is also a digenean eye fluke that is pretty rare, but is internal to the eye and prazi treatments won't cause it to fall off. However, these flukes need multiple hosts, so do not survive in aquariums. You firefish could also have one of these, and when it died, it just is going away through the healing process.

Jay