Ruby Wrasse

JamesWeaver · Sep 7, 2018

Well I had bought a ruby Wrasse a week ago and today came home from work and BAM dead lying on the sand. Yesterday he was swimming around, full of color and eating like a champ. All other fish a perfectly happy and healthy. No clue to why he died.

ReefWithCare · Sep 7, 2018

Sucks man - where did you get him from?

Did you QT him? I have the same fish in my DT. He was QT’ed for 45 days before going into the tank. Only thing he had in qt was worms. Dying out of the blue could be Velvet or an ammonia spike. Hopefully the reef squad can help answer

Big G · Sep 7, 2018

Too many fish suppliers and stores are treating their fish with sub-therapeutic levels of copper to suppress disease like velvet, ich, etc. The problem is that you take home the fish and within a few days up to 30 days, disease like velvet comes roaring back "without" the usual visual symptoms. The fish's gills are overwhelmed by the parasites unseen to you. The fish literally, suffocates within hours. Velvet and bacterial infections are rampant in the industry right now. Not good. Because of this, "consider" beginning treatment as if the fish has active velvet. Sorry for the loss of your beautiful fish. Sad.

JamesWeaver · Sep 7, 2018

I got the fish from a LFS which i have gotten all love stock from. When I first introduced him to the tank and my fox face was very aggressive towards him even flexing his spikes. He was extremely stiff when I took him out of the tank.

How do I treat for velvet?

Reefpuck · Sep 7, 2018

Just lost a wrasse that looked healthy because of what I think was a swim bladder issue. Never would've guessed when I saw it at the lfs.

Sorry to hear.

Big G · Sep 7, 2018

Here's the link to Humblefish's velvet treatment advisory. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/velvet-amyloodinium-ocellatum.217570/#post-2499437

It's important to note that he had greatly increased survival rates when adding an acriflavine bath (Ruby Reef Rally is the easiest to obtain).

I've pasted the short version "Emergency" treatment here and highlighted a few lines and added some comments.

The short version:

5 minute freshwater dip (this step is very important as it removes some of the velvet parasites from the fish's gills, allowing it to breathe easier.
Immediately afterwards, perform a chemical bath (in saltwater matching SG/temp the fish came from). You have two options:

Acriflavine (preferred) - Do the bath for 75-90 minutes, but remove the fish immediately at the first sign of distress. Aerate heavily both before & during the bath, and temperature control the water. The following products contain acriflavine: Acriflavine-MS and Ruby Reef Rally. DO NOT mix acriflavine with any other chemicals.
Formalin - Do the bath for 30-60 minutes max, but remove the fish immediately at the first sign of distress. Aerate heavily both before & during the bath, and temperature control the water. The following products contain formalin: Formalin-MS, Quick Cure, Aquarium Solutions Ich-X, Kordon Rid-Ich Plus. Use protection (rubber gloves, face mask, eye protection, etc.) whenever handling formalin as it is a known carcinogen! However, you can add Methylene Blue to the formalin bath (1 capful per 2-3 gallons of bath water.)

After the bath, place the fish in a QT pre-dosed at 80mg/gal using Chloroquine phosphate. In theory, copper (exs. Cupramine, Coppersafe, Copper Power) should work just as well as CP. However, due to how fast velvet can reproduce you don’t have the luxury of slowly ramping up the copper level as is normally advised. Therefore, the fish needs to be placed in a QT with copper already at minimum therapeutic levels: for Copper Power, that would be 1.5 ppm. If you have time and the fish is not in distress that you can see, rapid dosing over 2-4 days to get to therapeutic level is OK. Minimum level is 1.5 ppm - max level is 2.0 ppm. I usually dose at 1.75 ppm to give my fish a bit of wiggle room. Note: highly, highly recommend the Hanna High Level Copper Checker. It's so much easier and way more accurate than those cheap kits from API, etc. that are almost impossible to read the color for dosing. (~Gary) This is the advantage CP has over copper in this particular situation.
While in QT, use a wide spectrum antibiotic (exs. Seachem Kanaplex, Furan-2) for the first week to ward off any possible bacterial infections. Secondary bacterial infections are very common in fish with preexisting parasitic infestations such as velvet.
Keep the fish in CP or copper (at therapeutic levels) for one month. However, you can transfer the fish into a non-medicated holding tank for observation after just two weeks (explained below). DO NOT lower the CP or copper level before transferring.