Effective Gas bubble Disease Treatment!?!

[Krustylove]

I have read so many different articles and opinions about GBD that I do not know what to do to treat my infected tank/horses and every day that I do nothing my horses are getting worse-for example I have a female Reidi that now looks like a puffer fish? It is truly heartbreaking to watch. Have any of you guys successfully treated this thing or is it like freshwater Dropsy were 20 out of 20 variables contribute to it-basically everything involved in fish keeping.

 

[NanoLurker]

i've had what used to be called IGBD from a systemic bacterial infection in a horse, i've also had EGBD on the tail of one.

if your horse is swollen that badly, it may be too late to treat but we can try. do you have any antibiotics, if so which ones? do you have diamox? i work in irvine and can probably help you out with some stuff if you don't have any. how many horses are affected? are they still eating? species? CB or WC?

also, is the bloating from fluid retention (edema/negative bouyancy) or is she popping up to the surface (gas/positive bouyancy)?

can you post a picture?

ETA: what is the current tempature of your tank and other perameters (pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate)? if you haven't already done so, set up a QT tank ASAP. if you have multiple horses that need to be treated you may want to set up a couple or a large one.

 

[Krustylove]

Thanks for your reply, quickly on hand I have:
Metronidazole 250mg
Hostacycline 250mg
Erythromycin 29mg
Furan-2
Erythromycin 200mg

I haven’t tested the tank yet, but the temp is 77 and it is a 25 gallon system with a Fluvial canister filter and NO protein skimmer. I have crushed shell for substrate and culerpa galore. There are so many pods in this tank the water taken out from a water change ripples on the surface from all of them jumping around. I did recently had two deaths of some wild caught horses (they starved to death once removed from the 12 gallon QT tank) and I didn’t exactly rush to do a water change-my culerpa is so overgrown I didn’t notice they were both missing for a week! This tank has also had a history of GBD that is why I removed the protein skimmer and the bubble wand that use to be in it. Last year I lost 4 male Reidi horses from GBD that infected their pouches. This is the first time I have seen it inflate the body like a Michelin tier? Also I suspect my Erectus might have the beginnings of it in his tail?

Reidi

Fat tail on Erectus

Fat tail on Erectus

 

[NanoLurker]

you're sure she's not gravid? i was a little relieved at the photos, i've seen some horrid pictures of severe bloating.

so, we have a mixed species tank? are these two CB or WC? i'm assuming these two were tankmates of the two WCs that recently died? how long ago was that and what species were they?

 

[NONNA58]

I currently have a severely bloated male seahorse and I don't know why. He is not eating but he swims fine when he does swim. Can they still have GBD and still swin okay?

 

[BruceW]

The pictures look normal to me. If they were bloated with internal gas bubbles they would be floating on their sides on the surface. The female may just be filled with eggs or she may be egg bound. Sometimes the eggs decompose inside the female and cause big problems.

You need to get your temp down below 74 as 77 is too high for erectus. The higher temps can cause all kinds of bacterial infections. The treatments that have worked for me is to slowly lower the temps to 68 and the salinity to 1.018. This and I have had some limited success with maracyn II for SW. It can be absorbed thru the skin. I have only treated erectus, comes and barbs for this disease and only the erectus have recovered. I don't know about reidi but it might be prudent to keep them at lower temps also.

See if you can get a front view of your female so we can see how fat she is. Also keep an eye out for a pregnant male or orange eggs on the substrate.

If you feel you need more help I would suggest the emergency forum on www.seahorse.org

Bruce

 

[Krustylove]

Here are some pics of the front of my female Reidi, sorry they suck-need to spend less $$$ on fish and more on camera equipment Æ'º Anyways the remaining horses are all CB and the Erectus only had minimal contact with the WC Erectus that perished recently. Also I have never had Reidi females live to reproductive age so it is possible that she may be gravid, that would be so cool-anyways she does appear bloated and then it goes away. Also she does not have any problems swimming as my last batch of males with GBD in their pouches did! Thank you guys so much for helping me with this, I have never been this close to throwing in the towel on this awesome hobby-but this is my second year with seahorses and I was hopping I made all my big mistakes the first year. Anyways that goes to show you your never done learning¡K


Reidi female front view

 

[NanoLurker]

hi krusty,

i think your little girl has become a woman, it's always good to get a second opinion so let's see what bruce has to say. the second picture is kind of strange but i think it's a weird angle, is this a different picture of the same horse? i have a small juvi h. comes who takes on a rather strange pear shape when she's gravid, scared me the first time it happened.
you mentioned that "she does appear bloated and then it goes away" - this is probably on a pretty regular schedule right? you also may see some swelling/change in color in the area of the ovidepositor during this time, another indication that she is with eggs. they'll generally do two things with them if they don't have a mate to deposit them in, either reabsorb them or expell them. as bruce mentioned, if she does drop them you might see little orangish eggs in the tank.

this works for lighter colored horses but you can try it: shine a flashlight at her side when the lights are off (from behind), you can actually see the orangish color of the eggs in her abdomen.

it's good to hear that she eats, swims, and is acting normally. if anything changes there give a shout.

nonna - why don't you post a picture in a new thread here or as was mentioned seahorse.org? i have to plug renee (seahorsedreams) who put together a great gallery with short write ups on each condition called "Disease Pictures".

ETA: if you go to the org and look in "Disease Pictures" under swelling/bloating there is a picture of a small female i had last year (A-5). that photo was actually taken when the swelling was decreasing, she had gotten quite a bit larger than that she stopped eating, hitched low and wouldn't move for days. her respiration was extremely shallow and dropped to very, very low breaths per minute. i was able to get the infection undercontrol after starting her on a course of oral baytril and she "shrank" back to her normal size. while she did recover from the infection i believe i waited too long to tube feed her and she never regained the will to eat on her own. i wanted you to see that krusty and know the symptoms she presented, quite a bit different from a normal gravid female, behavior wise.

bruce - i've had problems when i use diamox at full dosage with this particular species, i've used it twice and the h. comes don't tolerate it well at all.

 

[Susied]

Lucky---looks like eggs to me, Bruce described the symptoms of internal gas disease....your horses would be floating. Definitely lower the temp. Are you keeping any corals in that tank? I may have missed the answer already, but is the Reidi in with the Erectus?

 

[Krustylove]

Boy, that is certainly good news-just eggs-phew$%&(*$@! I was fit to be tied! I have gone through the ringer with the SH learning curve. My first SH tank was filled with liverock, corals, and bristol worms?!?eeekkk. It was more of a reef set-up that even had a Barbie sized sump and skimmer. Now I am trying to be really prudent and I only have culerpa-no corals. And about the temp. would you believe that I have already gotten the temp. down from 80 degrees! I could just have the lights on for 6 hours instead of 8, but I don't know what else I could do short of installing a chiller? But I know you guys are right that bacteria thrive in high tank temps...and the Reidi is in with the Erectus which I have 3 of. Thanks for all your help

 

[NanoLurker]

krusty - start saving for a chiller! you have a mixed species tank which in itself can be problematic, you have to be able to keep the temperature down. continue to watch them closely, especially since you had that temp spike. as you know bacterial infections can develop very,very, quickly and have to be treated immediately, i'm gonna try and pick up a couple of additional meds and will give you a holler when i get them.

 

[Krustylove]

Well, the good news is that now that I know what to look for I can see that my female Reidi does have eggs and keeps pestering the large male Erectus who will have nothing to do with her. It also looks like she has a single egg sticking out of her octet. The bad news is that while I was performing maintanece duties on the tank and turning the heater down I discovered that my small male Erectus has flesh eating disease. He has a hole bore into his pouch. I have pulled him out of this tank and he is now in the refugium under my reef tank till I do some more homework on what if anything I can do for him. So far I have read that antibiotics may help if caught early enough-but his hole is pretty large.

Flesh eating disease

The horse on the right has a hole in his pouch?!?

 

[NanoLurker]

hang in there krusty.

isolate him in a seperate QT tank tonight or even a clean 5 gallon bucket. i don't know if you're coastal or inland but it's supposed to get into the low-mid 80's through sunday. can you freeze some water bottles and start floating them in his tank to get the temp down?