cloudy eye on coral beauty

[kcfehring]

I have had three fish die recently, like within five days of each other. My water parameters are excellent, I have checked for stray electrical currents and only found maybe one volt when my lights are on so I am not sure what the problem is.

At first I thought it might be ich because one of the fish that died looked like it might have some white spots on it. It died within 16 hours of noticing the white spots, but when I took it from my tank there was no spots, sores, scratches...anything it looked outwardly perfect except it was dead. Within 3 hours of that fish dying my diamond goby died even though it had no spots and looked perfect and had been eating and acting normal the night before.

While trying to figure this out and what to do about it I noticed that my coral beauty had been hiding behind rocks lately and has one white cloudy eye. Someone suggested this may be a bacterial infection but had no suggestions on what I should do about it. I only have four fish left and feel that it would be to stressful for them to remove them to a qt tank now (I would have to remove most of my rock and corals to get to them) I do have some flagyl (in the form of general cure by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals - 250 mg Metronidazole and 75 mg Praziquantel in powder form) would that work for bacterial infection and is it reef safe? Or is there something else I should be looking for.

Thanks

 

[Puffer Queen]

What water parameters are you testing and what are the specific numbers?

Do you quarantine all new additions to the tank?

How long has this tank been set up?

Is the tank a 44 gallon?

Metronidazole is for intestinal protozoans. Praziquantel is for cestodes. Neither is for bacterial infections of the eye.

Any treatment will need to be done in a separate tank as antibiotics will affect your reef. Porous materials like rock and substrate can absorb medications making achieving a therapeutic level difficult - thus effectively eradicating the bacteria.

 

[kcfehring]

I have a 55 gallon tank. I did not quarantine, but I certainly have learned my lesson. This actural tank has only been set up for about six weeks. But almost everything that is in there now, LR and LS, was in the 44 gallon that I upgraded from.

I was told that the reason the other fish died was probably because of ich and that they bacterial infection was a secondary illness due to the decreased immunity from the ich. This is why I was advised to use the meds listed above.

I was adviced not to move the remaining fish from the display because at this point it would just stress them more and to put the powder form of the meds in with there frozen food and feed it to them.

Tank parameters:

Temp. 78
specific grav. 1.024
alk. 8.7
calc. 470
phosphate less than .05
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 10
pH 8.4

I have been soaking food in garlic and added some seachem amino acid/vitamin supplement to the water. If there is other information that would help you help me figure out what to do I would be very happy to post it.

Thank you for your help

 

[Puffer Queen]

If the problem is ich as well as bacterial infection - two treatments will be needed:
Antiparasitic - hyposalinity, copper or the transfer method.
Antibiotic - nitrofurazone, kanamycin, minocylcine or enrofloxacin.

The treatment will need to be carried out in a separate tank as all of the above mentioned are not compatible with reefs.