amyloodinium, marine velvet, brookynella?

[salt creepette]

please help me diagnose this fish disease in my 10g with mated perculas.
this is taken from the post 'need to lower ph':

the female clownfish is doing fine and eating with normal respiration, but the male is not eating. he looks a bit thin. his respiration is rapid compared to hers, about 120 gill respirations per min.

It is so hard to diagnose these fish diseases. I think maybe oodinium cuz in joyce wilkersons book it says that the fish has failure to feed and rapid respiration rate, and the parasites are too small to see. that seems to be the case here. i dont think that I see anything on the fish, but there MIGHT be some whitish tiny dots or patches. its just too hard to tell. the other clown is unaffected.

later...

ok the fish made it through the night but now i can DEFINITELY see white stuff on him. some white dots and mostly white powder-like patches. should i treat it like amyloodinium or brookynella or marine velvet?? i will prolly treat this in tank after taking out inverts and LR and putting them in a bucket.

[salt creepette]

per joyce wilkersons book, since the fish doesnt seem to have a thick whitish mucous and isnt lying on the bottom of the tank or swimming on the surface, I think brookynella is out.

she describes amyloodinum as a difficult to recognize until it becomes advanced, a fine dusting of white dots. the fish swims into the current, breathes heavy, fails to feed, and scratches. ive observed all of the above except scratching.

Im not sure its ich because the dots are so tiny. its more like whitish patches. im off to the LFS to get copper and to get advice, armed with my books...

[Alice]

Erin;

Good luck with your fish. You might find formulin dips more effective than copper, especially as the fish is now in distress but let's see what you come home with from the LFS.

Even if you take the LR and inverts out of the tank, the meds are going to contaminate the substrate and possibley the seals and glass of the tank. I think you'd find it safer to treat the fish in a bucket or rubbermaid tub.

Got my fingers crossed!

Alice

[Toadfish]

Oodinium is the same as marine velvet. It is a quick killer. Typically when you find a dead or have a missing fish, then you know that you have oodinium. If you suspect oodinium then you will need to be fairly aggressive with the treatment. I have mentioned hydroplex before. It is a very good medicated dip for fish disease. Also you will need to keep your tank free of fish for at least a month as to allow the freeswimming parasites to die.

[salt creepette]

thanks guys. the lfs guy called the clown breeder where i got my clowns. said to dip in distilled ph adjusted water for 2 mins. if white stuff popped out, then she said amyloodinium. thats what happened. so i cleared everything out of the tank (I needed a hospital tank anyways) and treated with copper. the male looks better now. so we will see what happens.

ps Pepe (the peppermint shrimp), the blue leg hermits and snails, macro and tank decor are all living in a nice bucket for the next month or so (until they get relocated to the main tank). do they need an airstone and a heater, I assume? any water changes necessary? there's only about 2 gallons of water in there at the most.

[R1Bill]

did i read you correctly and you put copper in your display tank?

how are you going to get the copper out of the seals, off of the surface of the tank, off of all of your equipment? are you turning this into a fish only or permanant hospital tank?

bill

[salt creepette]

permanent hospital tank

[R1Bill]

good thing :-)

[salt creepette]

the only equipment is airstones and a small 10g whisper power filter. its only a 10 gallon aquarium. i needed a hospital/quarantine anyways.

[salt creepette]

btw, i got real lucky and somehow my 20 gallon tank has developed ich as well. it looks different than what is in my 10 gallon. I did a fwd and am bringing the salinity down from 1.025 to hopefully around 1.020 over the course of a few days, feeding garlic soaked food. hope the cleaner shrimp goes to work. if i need to I guess I can set up the OTHER 10 gallon and treat with copper there to.....(sigh)

[CAT]

Don't know how well the critters/algae would do in a bucket with no light or food, and only 2 gals. Is it possible to set up another permanent 10 gal. tank?

[salt creepette]

yeah i can do that.

the male clownfish is still hanging in there. I dosed the 10g tank with seachem cupramine (1 ml as per the instructions) and tested twice for copper with a read sea test kit I bought yesterday, and it showed absolutely 0 copper. now im wondering whether to dose again? the male has a lot of white on him, im not sure if its from burst cysts from the fwd yesterday or if its from more cysts. should I dose more copper or just leave it be??

[Alice]

I'd dose it per instructions. Tests kits aren't always what they're cracked up to be. Also, cupramine is the chelated copper and I don't think most copper tests pick that up.

Do you have substrate in this tank? Anything porous will absorb the copper and reduce the amount in the water.

[salt creepette]

there are scraps of cc in there but i scooped up most all of it. it says to put another ml in tomorrow so i will just do that. should I fwd him again or just leave him be? also should I fwd the female while im at it? shes fat and eating, but starting to see white spots on her.

[CAT]

I always used the Seachem test kit with the cupramine - got pretty accurate readings when I had to treat m.o. fish I ordered a couple of years ago. I think they need to go together. I'm glad you used the cupramine, it's considered safer than other copper remedies.