Sick eruption, head standing, pop eye, heavy breathing

Problem

1. Please explain the problems with your fish. When did you notice the problems and did anything unusual happen that you think started them?

Pop eye, heavy breathing with gills opening really wide, head standing (from Flubendazole I suspect), not eating. I noticed pop eye and breathing approx 2 weeks ago, moved into hospital tank one week ago. I do not suspect anything unusual, as the rest of the tank is fine. He was quite dark in the main tank and looked bad, stress lines were out etc. Within 3-4 hours of moving him into the hospital tank, he brightened up and lost all the stress stripes.


2. Symptoms (i.e. turning dark, excess slime, not eating, clamped fins, flashing, darting, clamped gills, white/yellow/green poop, hiding, headstanding or tailstanding, white on tips of fins, rotting or fungus, blisters/white zits on fish, bloated, cloudy eyes, wounds).

White/ clear stringy poo, pop eye, head standing, did have a white cut on its side but it has healed up completely. No bigger than a head of a match stick.
3. What medications/ treatments have you already tried and what were the results. Include dosage and duration of treatment.

Initially just lots of clean water in hospital tank , salt at 2 TBSP/38 L, flubendazole 3 days ago for 24 hours, just head standed after so I stopped. I have tried epsom salt and continued rock salt, with daily 90% water changes, some times more.

Tank/Water

4. Tank size and ages, numbers and sizes of fish.
2 fish in the hospital tank, approx 4-5 inches, tank approx 60 L


5. Water change regime (What percentage and how often).
90% or more daily

6. How long has tank been running? Is it bare bottom? If you have substrate, what type and how deep is it?
Hospital, with cycled media from main tank

7. Do you age your water? If you do for how long and what is the ph swing.

I do, but only for the purpose of de-gassing and using the sun to heat my water . No PH swing

8. What type/brand water conditioner do you use? Do you add it to the tank or aging barrel? How much do you use?
Prime, on the day of the water change. Recommened dose

9. Parameters and water source;

Note: Water Parameters are important in diagnosing problems within a tank. If you don't own test kits for the following information, you can purchase them, test your parameters and post this info as soon as possible.


- temp _28 C____

- ph __7.6___

- ammonia reading _0___

- nitrite reading _0___

- nitrate reading _0-5___

What type of water or combinations of water sources do you use? If it is an RO/tap/well water mix, please list percentages in the mix.

- well water ____

- municipal water _X___

- RO water ____


10. Any new fish, plants or inverts added recently.

No
11. Please tell us what you feed your fish and how often. This can be critical information for solving the problem so be as specific as you can.

FDBW, Ocean nutrition pellets, tropical flake 2x daily (not all of this at once)

12. Include any pictures or videos you have which shows the symptoms. If you can't add them to this post, please provide a link to them.


Additional notes: Basically I am not sure what to do next. I have metroplex on hand, flubendazole and Formalin. I don't want to go medicating blindly, and it feels right to at least have a "break" between medications to avoid stressing the fish too much. I have 6 discus in total all about 4-5 inches. 4 in the main tank are doing fine and eating like pigs, the red map that is in with the sick one I'm asking about, seems ok other than white/clear stringy poo and not eating.
Look forward to any help!


Attachment 124987Attachment 124987

Hey, Brendan.

Why are you treating Flubendazole? Clear white stringy poop is usually hex and not worms.

Since tailstanding started after dosing, check out the thread below.

http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...t=flubendazole

I would just do clean water for now and try not to feed to keep pristine water conditions. Hopefully the professionals chime in

HI Mando,

Flubendazole is all I had on hand at the time, and after a couple weeks with just clean water and salt I thought it was worth a go as I might have seen improvement.

Thanks for the link, I have already read through it and posted my experience with it :)

My discus was doing the opposite. Tail down, head up. I increased the water temp to 86 and did a 80 percent water change. He's swimming normal now. I tried to look for white poop. No white poop. Little black poop. He looks normal now.

You can try that and see how it goes.

Anyone else?

I've been watching this but really didn't know what to suggest. I've never used flubendazole and after reading the side effect thread, I never will. I've seen some people say their discus eventually came out of it with very clean water, others weren't so lucky.

As for the popeye condition, I would have suggested kanamycin. All I can think of is that as long as it's not pointing straight up and down, there may be hope.

Sorry I can't provide a better idea...

I would just do clean water for now. Still feed if he is eating but don’t over feed. Just observe for any other side effects other than the tail standing. Any White feces?

Thanks guys. Yeah both have white/clear thin stringy faeces. The head stander can occasionally correct himself too. It might just be a matter of time to heal. I have upped the temps to 31.5C, additional rock salt and started metroplex

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BrendanJ23

Thanks guys. Yeah both have white/clear thin stringy faeces. The head stander can occasionally correct himself too. It might just be a matter of time to heal. I have upped the temps to 31.5C, additional rock salt and started metroplex

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Run the treatment for 10 days. 31.5c is good temp.

Brendan I don't think metroplex is 100% pure. You can buy pure metro from JehmCo.com, or if you live in Cincinnati area I can give you some as I have 1kg of 100% pure. Lemme know mate

Hi Brendan,
I just saw this thread. Unfortunately you did use the wrong med for the problem here but I dont know if the flubendazole caused the head standing. Im guessing not. This sounded alot like protozoans when I initially read it.. Something like hexamita with the stringy clear feces so I can understand the suggestions to raise the heat and use metro. I dont want to confuse the issue but some of the symptoms you posted has me wondering if this is bacterial.. Thats my gut intuition.

White/ clear stringy poo, pop eye, head standing, did have a white cut on its side but it has healed up completely. No bigger than a head of a match stick. These arent hex symptoms... just the feces is.

The metro is a safe bet as it may help with this if its bacterial.. metro works on some anaerobic bacterias.

My suggestion is to use metro.. pure metro as Danny suggests .. you want 500-750 mgs per 10 gals for a good solid 10 days... and pick up some Kanamycin as Brian suggested incase the metro does not work.. You should see improvement with the metro after 5 days or so.. if not add the kanamycin and keep using the metro... the two.meds work well together.

I wish I had better news but I think you may lose that beautiful fish and would have even if you hadnt tried the flub... It really sounds like theres an infection internally.

I hope I am wrong.. please keep us posted..

Al

Thanks everyone for the advice. I am in Australia so I can’t access the same drugs quite as easily but I’ll see if my local vet might be able to help me out. If I can get pure metro and the other drug mentioned then I will.

Until then I will continue on the above treatment. His eyes seem to be slightly better and not quite as popped out.

Thanks also Al for the insight. For arguments sake and learning opportunity, would an internal infection be to some issue in my husbandry? Or potentially had something underlying when I purchased him? In my main tank I do 50% daily water changes(water is aged, heated etc, no ph swing), feed a mix of FDBW and ocean nutrition pellets, BB tank, wipe down glass etc.

Hi Brendan,

Quote:

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Thanks also Al for the insight. For arguments sake and learning opportunity, would an internal infection be to some issue in my husbandry? Or potentially had something underlying when I purchased him? In my main tank I do 50% daily water changes(water is aged, heated etc, no ph swing), feed a mix of FDBW and ocean nutrition pellets, BB tank, wipe down glass etc.

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You sound like you are doing great and I read your backposts and saw how you switched over to barebottom.. Sometimes, these things just happen. It could start with a blockage from over eating, it could be from a natural event like tumor, or it could be that the fish carried a small amount of pathogenic bacteria...all living things can and it just got over whelmed.

Theres a disease issue, some are experiencing here... I wonder if your fish experienced this and survived the initial infection ( possibly marked by that white spot on the head..
http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...esearch-(long)

It really hard to say, but I don't believe it was your husbandry.

al

Thanks Al. I am unable to obtain the above meds without a vet diagnosing this first. I can get a vet to come to the house to save transporting an already sick and stressed fish.

Until then I will stay on the current treatment plan. I have a brand new 6x2x2 being delivered in the next week or so, so the discus will be going into that (not the current QT’d ones). Hopefully that will help eliminate any bacteria etc that perhaps large WC and maintenance was not addressing. There is a background in my current tank and I am concerned it may be harbouring nasties.
It’s an in wall display tank project so keep an eye out in the other section, I’m pretty excited.

Back on topic though, I have noticed since upping the heat combined with metroplex they both seem to be excreting more clear stringy poo. I am only guessing this could be them clearing out their system? Time will tell I guess.
Thanks again for your time on this one, I’ll keep everyone posted whether it’s a good or bad outcome. Fingers crossed.

if you like your fish buy microscope :D