Swollen Gills

[Demosthenes]

1. Please explain the problems with your fish. About a month ago I noticed my fish were breathing heavily, had swollen gills, some even clamping gills. I figured out the issue was beef heart rotting in the canister filter - there was a slimy mold looking substance all over the inside. I cleaned the canister and added a pre-filter sponge, as well as a supplemental sponge filter, and I've gotten the mold situation under control. I did lose one fish to bloat at that time, which I think must have been related to whatever pathogen was present in the filter. I treated the whole tank with 1tbs/10gal of salt for about a week and most of the fish returned to normal. However the fish with the worst looking gills never really looked right, and since then I've noticed a second fish who still has swollen/flared gills as well. I thought they might just need more time to heal so I gave it a few weeks, but there's been no improvement and I think it might actually be getting worse. So I decided to try another round of salt, this time at 2tbs/10 gal. It's been 3 days and they still aren't looking any better.

I'm wondering if it's time to try something else besides salt.

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).
Swollen/flared gills and heavy breathing. Otherwise fish are healthy and growing.

3. What medications/ treatments have you already tried and what were the results. Include dosage and duration of treatment.
Salt, first 1tbs/10 for 1 week, then 3 weeks no meds, now 3 days of salt at 2tbs/10gal.


Tank/Water

4. Tank size and ages, numbers and sizes of fish.
37gal, 6 fish about 3.5-4 inches. Purchased from Hans at the beginning of June at 3 inches.


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

6. How long has tank been running? Is it bare bottom? If you have substrate, what type and how deep is it?
Tank is a 40gal breeder. Has been running for 10+yrs, but recently stripped to bare-bottom to be used as grow-out tank.

7. Do you age your water? If you do for how long and what is the ph swing.
No aging, no swing.

8. 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 __85_

- ph __6.7_

- ammonia reading __Not sure - I haven't tested for ammonia in yrs since the tank has been cycled forever and it isn't on my test strips.

- nitrite reading __0__

- nitrate reading __barely registers__

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 ____


9. Any new fish, plants or inverts added recently.
All discus added at the beginning of June. There are no other current occupants besides snails, but the tank was previously used as a community tank and not sterilized in between. All previous occupants had been in the tank for more than 2 yrs.

10. 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.
Hans' beef heart mix 2 or 3 x daily, plus occasional Tetra Color Bits and recently Al's Discus Chow.

11. 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.

[Ryan925]

I would say it's tough due to the variable of putting them into a previously used tank with established media. You could potentially have a cross contamination issue. I don't know that the slime from the canister would have caused this. Believe me when I started with my fish I opened a slimy filter many times and never had an illness. You are doing right by the large wcs daily

I don't ever feel comfortable suggesting meds so hopefully a bump will get you some response

[ssevasta]

Have you tried to email Hans and ask his advice? He's usually extremely helpful and willing to offer advice based on his many years of experience. As far as the possibility of contamination well that puts you in a tough situation where the fish could be carrying all kinds of nasties and a temporary drop in water quality could lead to disaster. If you do choose to medicate them I would suggest you use a broad spectrum medication like Fucin that'll knock out both gram positive and negative bacteria and then a parasitical treatment after a few days or week of recovery time with Levamisole. Bill at inlandempirediscus.com carries those medications. Good luck.

P.S. You should try adding two air stones to the tank before you do anything else just to make sure it isn't an oxygenation issue.

[jmf3460]

in your video, all the discus are breathing extremely fast. Do you have a ph swing issue going on and the gills are showing PH burn? I would say based on the video, you definitely have something contaminating the water.

[Demosthenes]

Ryan - Yes, cross contamination is a very real possibility. The previous occupants of the tank were all healthy fish that I've had for years, and they're all going to end up in the same community tank once these guys are grown out. They were going to be exposed to each other at some point no matter what, so I took the risk.

Sean - I hadn't thought to email Hans, but that's good advice. I forgot to mention that the very first thing I tried was adding an air-stone, so I've ruled out oxygenation as the issue.

Jacklyn - They all look pretty terrible in that video because I freaked them out chasing them around the tank trying to get pictures. I'll try to get another video without scaring them to show you what they normally look like. There is no pH swing according to my test strips, but my liquid API test kit expired so I'm not getting very precise readings.

Yesterday I decommissioned the canister. I went to clean it and there was still some of this white fungus/mold/bacteria crap, so I'd had enough. The sponge filter has been seeding for 3 weeks, and I took all the fluval biomax from the canister and put it in mesh bags in the tank, so I should avoid a mini-cycle. I'm not satisfied with the flow I'm getting from the one sponge filter, so I ordered a second that should be here tomorrow.

I stopped the salt treatment yesterday after 4 days, and it's hard to say if it made any difference. They might look a little better, and I might be imagining things. Just now I added some Melafix...I know people around here tend to think it's just snake oil, but I've had Tea Tree in my medicine cabinet my whole life and it isn't nothing. It kills nail fungus and helps heal cuts and scrapes, so if my issue really is trace amounts of this white mold stuff in the water column, maybe it will help. I'm going to give it a few days without the canister and with the Melafix and see if there's any improvement. I'm still hesitant to throw powerful meds at them if it can be avoided.

[Demosthenes]

Here's a better video of what the whole group typically looks like. Does it still seem like they are all breathing too fast for their size?

[ssevasta]

I still think there's something going on with their gills. It's almost like the fish version of taking really deep breaths or breathing very heavily.

[Demosthenes]

So I gave it five days since I removed the canister filter, the java fern, and most of the snails, and started treating with Melafix, and there is more or less no change. I'm fairly confident at this point that the tank is completely spotless, so unless there is something wrong with my tap water there shouldn't be any ongoing contamination. Does is still make sense that this would be a bacterial infection? Can a mild infection just drag on like that without any real change?

Should I just go ahead and treat with something like Furan 2 and see if that makes a difference?

[Ryan925]

So I gave it five days since I removed the canister filter, the java fern, and most of the snails, and started treating with Melafix, and there is more or less no change. I'm fairly confident at this point that the tank is completely spotless, so unless there is something wrong with my tap water there shouldn't be any ongoing contamination. Does is still make sense that this would be a bacterial infection? Can a mild infection just drag on like that without any real change?

Should I just go ahead and treat with something like Furan 2 and see if that makes a difference?

I'm pretty sure I have read in other threads that melafix and primafix are essentially snake oil. I don't think that you should bank on that as freeing your tank of any type of cross contamination

[Demosthenes]

I'm pretty sure I have read in other threads that melafix and primafix are essentially snake oil. I don't think that you should bank on that as freeing your tank of any type of cross contamination

Melafix is Tea Tree oil. It isn't snake oil, but it isn't penicillin either. I've personally used Tea Tree to kill nail fungus, and it works. But I certainly didn't mean to imply that it would have sterilized the tank. It's very mild. I'm thinking the tank is "clean" because I've obsessively cleaned or removed every single thing that could possibly be harboring food for a bacterial bloom, except the fish themselves and the tap water. There's definitely still something going on, I just think I've reached the limits of what can be achieved with physical cleaning and water changes. Make sense?

The one big thing I have yet to rule out is that there's something wrong with the tap water. I'm going to take a water sample to my LFS tomorrow. If everything comes back clean I'm going to buy some Furan 2. Does that make sense? Assuming my water is fine, is Furan 2 the right med for this situation? I hate using antibiotics...

[Demosthenes]

I just got back from my LFS and....there's ammonia in my tapwater . It all makes sense now. Hopefully switching from API Tap Water Conditioner to Prime will be the end of this.

[Ryan925]

I just got back from my LFS and....there's ammonia in my tapwater . It all makes sense now. Hopefully switching from API Tap Water Conditioner to Prime will be the end of this.

Hopefully it's that simple. Good news

[jmf3460]

ammonia poisoning is a big deal. how long has it been since you've tested ammonia? you may see permanent gill damage to these fish if they have been in the ammonia water for an extended amount of time. Prime will detoxify the ammonia but you need to be certain that you have plenty of bb in your tank to quickly convert the ammonia to nitrates.

[100fuegos]

No, positive ammonia in tap water usually means chloramines. If the water conditioner you have been using does not detoxifies chloramines then your fish have chloramines burns, not ammonia burns. Besides chloramines will impact your BB so it may be a mixture of things. Your fish may develop scar tissue on the gills and may end up with deformed gills for the rest of their lifes.

[Demosthenes]

Jacklyn, this tank has been fully cycled for 10+ yrs, so I haven't tested for ammonia in a long time. I've had the fish since the beginning of June. If there is free ammonia in the tap water, they would have been exposed to it every day when I do water changes, for however long it takes for the BB to process it.

100fuegos - So you're saying a positive reading for ammonia might actually be chloramine? I have been using API Tap Water Conditioner at the dosage recommended for chloramine detoxification, so that should not have been an issue in the tank. The water that I had tested was untreated though, so it still would have showed up on the test. Is there a way to test for chloramine vs ammonia, or to test the concentration? If chloramine levels in my water are high, maybe I need to overdose the water conditioner?