Help, Fish dying

[cmcoker]

Puppies and kittens, like farm animals, are domesticated. (Also, is that considered "best practice"?)

The vast majority of fish we keep are, unfortunately, not.

There are very few (any?) marine fish which we know anywhere near as well as domesticated animals.

Instead of taking a more cavalier attitude, we should be taking a more conservative attitude.

I'm not really sure what being domesticated has to do with it, they still have diseases and parasites that affect them, they still have some diseases that are poorly understood.

I'm also not sure how using medications prophylacticly that have been proven and used successfully to treat the common diseases and parasites that affect our aquarium fish is cavalier, ie copper and prazipro.

A more realistic statement, in line with my views, would be "quarantine your fish, use praziquantal prophylacticly, and choose between - observation or use of copper, TTM, or CP prophylacticly followed by observation.

There are several knowledgeable people here on the forum who can help identify through images, and description of symptoms a course of action to take.

If you have the means to seek out the help of a qualified Veterinarian for help, do so.

If you have access to a microscope, anesthetic, instruments to obtain scraping and gill biopsies and want to play vet with your own livestock, then feel free. I am not against this, I am against suggesting this is the only acceptable way.

That is all I am going to say about this, we have derailed this thread too much already and will have to agree to disagree. And to the OP, I apologize for the derailment.

 

[jetmaker]

Do a 50% water change and 25% subsequent ones until flushed. Run activated carbon.
It's possible you have a toxin from something that either died or stressed out.
Possibly a sea cucumber or fish.
When I first started I caught a box fish, didn't realize they release a toxin when stressed and loss all my fish. Couldn't figure out what killed them then, and kept adding fish. Finally after months someone informed me about box fish. I flushed a lot of fish because of this lack of knowledge.

I done this very thing with a box fish about 20 yrs ago killed the whole tank.

 

[Paul B]

Although I have a microscope I find that a Jeweler's Loupe is handier and unlike a microscope, can be used on a live fish in a net. They are probably under five bucks and have plenty of magnification to see parasites. Besides that, all parasites are invertebrates and all inverts are killed with copper so if you are unsure what parasite your fish have, copper should work on them. I have no use now for any medications but that takes some years to figure out.