Need help identifying the problem with my clown fish

[mindme]

No offense but Jay Hemdal is not just some guy on a forum. I’d trust his experience, degrees, and books above all else. I felt like it might be velvet or ich but I didn’t say anything because I am just some person on the forums who reads a lot. You acknowledge yourself it could be velvet and velvet can kill everything in the tank very quickly, so recognizing that it could be that, you should be advocating for fast treatment.

Yeah well he misdiagnosed a tang of mine last year as "velvet" when it ended up being stress. He may know lots of things on treatment and I would not argue with him on that. But he's looking at a few pictures and making judgment based on that, while generally ignoring much of what the poster actually says.

But hey, I'd love to hear how velvet can stay in a tank for 6-8 months before infecting a fish, and then only infecting a single fish to that degree. Because that is new to me.

 

[balajeek15]

I haven't had the QT ready. so I was making RO/DI water and mixing salt and getting it ready.

Then i came with a new problem of the salinity level which makes me now very confusing. I recalibrated hanna and checked.

Hanna checker shows 27 on my DT
Neptune Apex shows 32 on my DT
So i took my old refractometer and it shows 35 on DT

I am not sure now which one to believe so i can make the water for my QT now

Before the hanna calibration,
My last water change on DT i did 2 weeks ago was 20gal on a 90gal tank. I used Hanna at that time to check the salinity level. My Neptune Apex showed reading of 32 ppt after the change (its down from 35ppt, looking at the history over 90 days)

 

[balajeek15]

Yeah well he misdiagnosed a tang of mine last year as "velvet" when it ended up being stress. He may know lots of things on treatment and I would not argue with him on that. But he's looking at a few pictures and making judgment based on that, while generally ignoring much of what the poster actually says.

But hey, I'd love to hear how velvet can stay in a tank for 6-8 months before infecting a fish, and then only infecting a single fish to that degree. Because that is new to me.

I had the same question myself, how a disease can affect my tank when the last fish i added is more than 2 years ago, and 6 months ago i added around 10 snails. And i made sure no water from the bag goes to my DT.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Yeah well he misdiagnosed a tang of mine last year as "velvet" when it ended up being stress. He may know lots of things on treatment and I would not argue with him on that. But he's looking at a few pictures and making judgment based on that, while generally ignoring much of what the poster actually says.

But hey, I'd love to hear how velvet can stay in a tank for 6-8 months before infecting a fish, and then only infecting a single fish to that degree. Because that is new to me.

Hi,

Sorry to hear that I missed the mark with your case. My job here is to try and diagnose member's fish diseases based on gross visual symptoms, (often from poor photos taken under blue lights) plus the often flawed information supplied by the original poster. Remote fish disease diagnosis is VERY difficult. In my own work, I would usually perform a diagnostic skin scrape and look at the sample under a microscope. If that fails, I submit samples to our veterinarians for histopathology. Even then, I'm not always able to determine what is going on for some cases.

I try very hard to ensure that the judgement I make in every case here is the best that I can offer; given the information that I have been supplied. Am I right all the time? Nope! - but I work really hard to avoid gross errors. I feel that the net results are much better than seen with other platforms like Facebook.

If you take a look at the link below my name here (or in the sticky section above the fish disease section), I explain that the advice that I present needs to be carefully evaluated for your own particular use.

Thanks,

Jay

 

[balajeek15]

Hi,

Sorry to hear that I missed the mark with your case. My job here is to try and diagnose member's fish diseases based on gross visual symptoms, (often from poor photos taken under blue lights) plus the often flawed information supplied by the original poster. Remote fish disease diagnosis is VERY difficult. In my own work, I would usually perform a diagnostic skin scrape and look at the sample under a microscope. If that fails, I submit samples to our veterinarians for histopathology. Even then, I'm not always able to determine what is going on for some cases.

I try very hard to ensure that the judgement I make in every case here is the best that I can offer; given the information that I have been supplied. Am I right all the time? Nope! - but I work really hard to avoid gross errors. I feel that the net results are much better than seen with other platforms like Facebook.

If you take a look at the link below my name here (or in the sticky section above the fish disease section), I explain that the advice that I present needs to be carefully evaluated for your own particular use.

Thanks,

Jay

thank you for your help Jay

 

[ariellemermaid]

Yeah well he misdiagnosed a tang of mine last year as "velvet" when it ended up being stress.

Personally I’d love to see your thesis on “stress” manifesting with signs and symptoms of ich/velvet. It’s true that stress can weaken the immune system and allow parasites to proliferate, but “stress” alone mimicking physical, visual disease symptoms…I just don’t buy that. Also, even if your unusual hypothesis is correct there’s no harm in treating for parasites. A fish dying despite treatment isn’t evidence that “stress” was the cause. More likely, the treatment was just too late as is very frequently the case with velvet.

In terms of your last paragraph just because a disease doesn’t run rampant enough to show signs that YOU can see doesn’t mean it’s not there. In fact that’s frequently the case with ich. You can have ich in your tank for years and never know it because the fish are healthy and can fight it to the point you never see it. Until a fish gets stressed or weak and it takes over. That’s the whole idea behind “ich management”….keeping fish healthy enough they can fight it so it’s not a problem, despite it still being there.

 

[Uzidaisies]

I definitely don’t think doing nothing is the right course of action. That fish is whacked right out buddy.

 

[mindme]

Hi,

Sorry to hear that I missed the mark with your case. My job here is to try and diagnose member's fish diseases based on gross visual symptoms, (often from poor photos taken under blue lights) plus the often flawed information supplied by the original poster. Remote fish disease diagnosis is VERY difficult. In my own work, I would usually perform a diagnostic skin scrape and look at the sample under a microscope. If that fails, I submit samples to our veterinarians for histopathology. Even then, I'm not always able to determine what is going on for some cases.

I try very hard to ensure that the judgement I make in every case here is the best that I can offer; given the information that I have been supplied. Am I right all the time? Nope! - but I work really hard to avoid gross errors. I feel that the net results are much better than seen with other platforms like Facebook.

If you take a look at the link below my name here (or in the sticky section above the fish disease section), I explain that the advice that I present needs to be carefully evaluated for your own particular use.

Thanks,

Jay

I don't blame you. I realized you are trying to diagnose based only on a few pictures.

I only mentioned it because someone pulled an appeal to authority fallacy.

 

[balajeek15]

ANY IDEA THE LOW SALINITY (CAUSED BY MY WATER CHANGE WHICH I MENTIONED BEFORE) COULD CAUSE THE FISH TO STRESS ?

WHILE I SETTING UP THE QT I AM ALSO INCREASING THE SALINITY ON DT

 

[mindme]

Personally I’d love to see your thesis on “stress” manifesting with signs and symptoms of ich/velvet. It’s true that stress can weaken the immune system and allow parasites to proliferate, but “stress” alone mimicking physical, visual disease symptoms…I just don’t buy that. Also, even if your unusual hypothesis is correct there’s no harm in treating for parasites. A fish dying despite treatment isn’t evidence that “stress” was the cause. More likely, the treatment was just too late as is very frequently the case with velvet.

In terms of your last paragraph just because a disease doesn’t run rampant enough to show signs that YOU can see doesn’t mean it’s not there. In fact that’s frequently the case with ich. You can have ich in your tank for years and never know it because the fish are healthy and can fight it to the point you never see it. Until a fish gets stressed or weak and it takes over. That’s the whole idea behind “ich management”….keeping fish healthy enough they can fight it so it’s not a problem, despite it still being there.

I don't have a thesis. Last year I had a velvet outbreak in my 180g after I set it up. My entire fish population was wiped out in less than a week after symptoms started, outside a single sailfin that I managed to save, only because it was too sick to get away. I just saw then how quickly it takes over, and it wasn't just in 1 fish, it was all.

And then I started to QT my fish etc. And during QT I had a naso that got a spot, but it was due to stress after shipping(my best guess), rather than velvet.

I do not know what is wrong with his fish. I agree that the picture looks like a lot like velvet. But what does not make sense is that he says it's been 6-8 months since he added anything to the tank. So how does the velvet enter into the water? If not for that detail, I would assume velvet as well. However, I kept my tank fallow for 2 months as a means to get rid of velvet in the tank, but now 6-8 months and it shows up? That does not make sense to me.

Also another symptom of velvet is the fish do not like to be in the light. When my fish had velvet they mostly hung out under a ledge. I didn't see any mention of being sensitive to light. Also no mentions of flashing, another symptom.

And as for it not running rampant enough - that is certainly NOT my experience with velvet. It does run rampant. It also causes them to have difficulty breathing, which is why I said if the fish shows that symptom, I'd probably pull him, and maybe fresh water dip.

If it is velvet, the other fish will show symptoms soon enough.

 

[Grumblez]

ANY IDEA THE LOW SALINITY (CAUSED BY MY WATER CHANGE WHICH I MENTIONED BEFORE) COULD CAUSE THE FISH TO STRESS ?

WHILE I SETTING UP THE QT I AM ALSO INCREASING THE SALINITY ON DT

Maybe some but those are not huge drops in salinity, and the general rule is fast drops down much less harmful than fast increases iirc. Swings in salinity is gonna upset corals more than fish.
Actually hyposalinity is a treatment for some diseases, but would have to go lower than that.

 

[balajeek15]

Woke up this morning eariler than before, still night light at the DT, I notice one chromis just staying very close around the big clown, and looking around the tank notice one other chromis dead. Just removed it. When the lights come up i will have to closely monitor. My QT is ready with same level of salinity and temp. just have to decide what mediation i am going to put. I have copper, CP -chloroquine phosphate.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Woke up this morning eariler than before, still night light at the DT, I notice one chromis just staying very close around the big clown, and looking around the tank notice one other chromis dead. Just removed it. When the lights come up i will have to closely monitor. My QT is ready with same level of salinity and temp. just have to decide what mediation i am going to put. I have copper, CP -chloroquine phosphate.

So - I was pondering why just the one clown seemed to have symptoms, and now a green chromis has died? That implies to me that something is going on tank-wide. In looking at the clown's photo on my computer (I was on my phone yesterday) I can't 100% rule out Brooklynella, but it still is probably ich or velvet.

Did I see some growing Acropora in the picture? If so, then I tend to rule out water quality issues across the board - any water problem that will kill fish is going to affect the Acropora coral first.

Could you get some short videos of your fish taken under white light? Maybe one 10 second video of the whole tank, and then short videos of individual fish.

We need to move quickly on this - once fish loss has occurred, it is often very difficult to correct the issue before more losses take place

Jay

 

[ariellemermaid]

Woke up this morning eariler than before, still night light at the DT, I notice one chromis just staying very close around the big clown, and looking around the tank notice one other chromis dead. Just removed it. When the lights come up i will have to closely monitor. My QT is ready with same level of salinity and temp. just have to decide what mediation i am going to put. I have copper, CP -chloroquine phosphate.

Yikes sounds like it’s spreading! I just wouldn’t use CP based on this experience by Humblefish. He’s a big CP fan, but has also killed multiple hippo tangs with CP it sounds like. Copper does take some time to dose up, however, which is one of the downsides. You can start at 1.0 with copper power though.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I don't blame you. I realized you are trying to diagnose based only on a few pictures.

I only mentioned it because someone pulled an appeal to authority fallacy.

I went back to try and find the post you are talking about. I always try to refine my advice when I can, hindsight is sometimes 20:20. Can you point me to where I gave you an incorrect diagnosis? I can only find the one thread from last December about the Naso tang. I just asked a question about its breathing (because I suspected velvet). I never came out with a diagnosis there because Vetteguy was responding to you......it looks to me that he was the one who diagnosed that for you. Was there another post that I am missing?

Jay

 

[balajeek15]

Yikes sounds like it’s spreading! I just wouldn’t use CP based on this experience by Humblefish. He’s a big CP fan, but has also killed multiple hippo tangs with CP it sounds like. Copper does take some time to dose up, however, which is one of the downsides. You can start at 1.0 with copper power though.

i have read or learnt that CP does not work for tangs, so i did not intend to do CP on tangs, tang seem okay now, my first priority is the get the clown out this morning into QT with CP. and i will have another QT with copper setup sometime today just in case if i need to move more fish.

 

[balajeek15]

I moved the clown to QT just now, and shot this short video if you want to more clarity.
Let me know what you think.

 

[balajeek15]

I moved the clown to QT just now, and shot this short video if you want to more clarity.
Let me know what you think.

should i start the CP right away or wait for a day ?

 

[Sebastiancrab]

Yeah well he misdiagnosed a tang of mine last year as "velvet" when it ended up being stress. He may know lots of things on treatment and I would not argue with him on that. But he's looking at a few pictures and making judgment based on that, while generally ignoring much of what the poster actually says.

But hey, I'd love to hear how velvet can stay in a tank for 6-8 months before infecting a fish, and then only infecting a single fish to that degree. Because that is new to me.

We are lucky to have Jay on this blog and I consider him the resident doctor. He has a tough job doing this online. There is no doubt the fish has a crisis disease and I agree all fish need to be put into quarantine and treated.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I moved the clown to QT just now, and shot this short video if you want to more clarity.
Let me know what you think.

So - by virtue of the slow breathing, that isn't velvet. The three possible diagnoses are: ich, brooklynella or just excess mucus. I'd rule out the mucus issue because the green chromis died. This still does not look like brooklynella to me, so that leaves ich. Treating this fish in a QT does nothing for the fish still in the DT, and one of those has died, and another is acting off, right?

For clarity here - CP can have two meanings: Copper Power or Chloroquine Phosphate. I presume you are talking about the latter, but I want to be certain.

As I had suggested, I need a 10 second video of the whole tank, and then short videos of each individual fish.

Jay