Can hyposalinity cause fish to bloat??

[raynist]

Chromis bloated after hyposalinty treatment. Is this possible or is there some other reason?

--Ray

 

[jeffbrig]

How long have they been in hyposalinity, and how quickly did you raise or lower the salinity?

I have an achilles tang who spent an extended period (6-7 weeks) in hypo. When I started slowly raising his sg, somewhere around 1.014 he started experiencing swelling in his abdominal cavity. It was starting to affect the operation of his swim bladder, and he was listing to one side. I thought he was a goner. We treated the water with epsom salts and gave one dose of antibiotic. He hung in there for a couple of days, so we decided to continue raising the salinity. He started to improve and made a full recovery.

 

[raynist]

I started the treatment on Friday night. Completed to 1.009 on sunday morning. I changed out about 15% of the water every 10 hours.

How much epson salts did you use?

Maybe I will start increasing the salt...

Thanks for your response

--Ray

 

[jeffbrig]

36 hours is pretty fast to bring down the salinity like that, I think I did mine over a period of 3 days. Not sure if that would explain the swelling though. I've heard of kidney problems (affecting osmoregulation) that can develop from very long periods of hyposalinity, which I kind of thought might have been what I was seeing. That's not going to be an issue here after just a few days in hypo. Wish I had more to offer....

I think we did something like 1 tsp per gallon added to our water change water. Look for instructions for treating popeye and the like, that's what we went by.

Also, be sure to go much slower on the way up (.002 per day). Fish are generally much more sensitive to rapid increases in salinity than decreases.

 

[raynist]

Thanks for your help. I added 1tsp per 5g last night as well as upping the salt a bit. They *seem* to be doing better, yesterday they were laying on their sides in the AM, today they were not.
--Ray

 

[TerryB]

What was the pH befroe you added epsom salt?

Terry B

 

[raynist]

Terry, I did not check it. I did that at 2am last night. Does teh epsom salts affect PH??

I will check everything when I get home.

--Ray

 

[raynist]

ph was 8.1. I am down to 2 fish, but the two are looking better.