bubble on anithias eye

[gozermantis]

i recently brought home a lyretail anithias in a piece of live rock i purchased. it must have been under some stress since it was in the bag for a while and was seemingly stuck. it was doing great as far as i could tell. eating anything and everything i tried. it is was very active and didn't hide much as it still does. however today i noticed a bubble forming over his right eye. i have a 20 gallon tank with a protein skimmer and sufficent filter. with the anithias i have one small maroon clown two small false perculas one clown goby and three hermit crabs. i also have a small xenia frag and another small frag of trumpet coral. my nitrates and nitrites are fine, but my ammonia level is a little high, between .25 nd .50. i was hoping someone could help with a diagnosis and treatment. it is a beautiful fish and quite interactive, and would like to do as much as possible to help this fish thrive.

 

[JHemdal]

gozermantis,

Although not the cause of the problem with the anthias' eye, you need to figure out why there is ammonia levels like that - it sounds like it is an established tank, perhaps the test kit is giving spurious results?

Regarding the fish's eye - is it a clear bubble, with no signs of redness or cloudiness? If so, it is almost positive that the fish has eye trauma that resulted in exophthalmus (popeye). Moving a fish with a rock is the likely direct cause, but it is possible for fish to get this from just flipping about in the net. In some cases, we just don't know how the fish is injured.

There is no treatment for this. Antibiotics won't help if there is no infection. Some people advocate capturing the fish up and bleeding the air bubble with a syringe. The problem is that each time you catch the fish to do this (and it has to be done very few days) you risk injuring the eye further. Some public aquarist use a recompresison chamber to reduce the air bubble.

The good thing is that in about half the cases, the problem goes away on its own in a few weeks....


Jay

 

[gozermantis]

thanks for you reply jay. it is a tiny bit cloudy but i can still see the eye.

 

[cerianthus]

Is there fine mists in the tank? perhaps from retruning water from skimmer?
If so, try to get rid of fine mists. If get cloudy/pop eye, may need treatment in q/T!
Curious of NH3 presence if well estalished tank. Possible new Lr is recuring?

 

[JHemdal]

cerianthus,

Usually, supersaturation causes exophthalmus in both eyes at once, and in most instances, all fish are affected equally. The fine bubbles in the water is not the sign of supersaturation, you can have tanks with that problem that are crystal clear, depending on how the air is being injected into the system. It is really the dissolved gasses that cause the problem, not the bubbles (although you can have both at the same time). In fact, one way to reduce supersaturation is to aerate the water more vigorously (think shaking up a can of soda).


Jay

 

[gozermantis]

it is very possibly that the live rock is still curing. i also added three rather large pieces at one time, and didn't find out until later that adding LR is just the same as adding fish. i also have a lot of aeration going in the tank. between the filter and my power head. is it possible to over aerate the water? the tank has also been a bit cloudy the past week or so and i haven't been able to fix the problem. i've been doing a gallon water change each night ( using ro water ) and have added a protein skimmer and changed the filter cartridge. it looks a lot better to me today though. i'm getting a canister filter next week. i just hope its not too late by then.