Hyposalinity for Marine Velvet ?

[blueplanet]

Hi Lee, thanks! Great link too. You are right on bacteria issue. you are spot on when you said "overfeed".

Meantime, I am doing daily water change to upgrade the water quality... I suppose that helps to get the emperor better by the day. Thank God.

By the way, I suspect there is some kind of species specific gill flukes in my tank. as the angels (emperor & regal) are the ones which showed most hard breathing as compared to other tank inhabitants, which seem unaffected!

Do you have any experience treating gill flukes? Would there be any dips (like formailn 37% , paraguard ...etc) which will work, rather than goin the way of a hospital tank? I heard Life Bearer from AP www.ap-products.com is good. Any experience from any one? If not, what else can be good?

All of you guys are good and helpful lot. Thanks a lot for helping me to head in right direction to get my fish back to health...

 

[leebca]

Respiratory stress (breathing rapidly) can by symptomatic of several causes. Don't jump to a gill flukes conclusion too quickly. Some examples are: parasitic diseases, TB, bacteria infections, gill flukes, etc. The problem is that bacterial, TB, and gill fluke infestations progress very similarly and slowly.

There are 'mechanical' sources for rapid breathing: you need to consider if the tank is large enough; is the water oxygenated properly; is carbon dioxide being exported from the tank; is the room the tank is in have a carbon dioxide content too high, compared to fresh air; is there enough fresh air getting to the tank; etc.?

You will be surprised on how the last paragraph problems also affect pH and controlling pH. During a hyposalinity treatment, it is a challenge to control pH, BUT if you haven't addressed the things in the above paragraph before doing your hyposalinity treatment, you will find controlling the pH to be a nightmare. I have known people to do poorly at controlling pH when the real problem was something in the previous paragraph, and not just because their salinity was low.

There are test kits for oxygen in water. There is also secondary evidence of certain bacterial activity and oxygen presence through ORP measurements.

When you have too many bacteria, you see the bacteria are using up oxygen too and maybe not leaving enough for all the fish to be comfortable.

If fish are known to have gill flukes the infestation is usually accompanied by the fish scratching (flashing) on its gill cover. With gill flukes, the fish will often eat normally and appear normal except for the two symptoms noted.

Gill flukes are usually susceptible to either a freshwater (FW), or a Formalin dip, or both. I would begin with a FW dip, others might prefer going right to a Formalin dip.

Terry has written a very good article on Formalin dips and baths:
http://www.marineaquariumadvice.com/formaldehyde_friend_or_foe.html

Since it is stressful to the fish, Formalin treatment is best done when the fish is in quarantine, since you will need to perform multiple baths, and the fish will be easily and less stressfully caught.

 

[blueplanet]

Lee, Thanks for such prompt and helpful response.

I am quite certain its gill flukes based on the two symptoms: rapid respiration & scratching gill covers you mentioned. Other than that, they are eating very good. The emperor has regained its usual appetite. The only othe rthing I observe is that its forhead exhibits some loss of color.

The tank is in the room with open air ciculation to outside air. In any case, I will get a O2 test kit today.

Tank is 90 gal with one 5" emperor, 2.5" Regal angel, firefish, cleaner wrasse ( with us for more than 1.5 year -eats pellets & flakes), red shouder fairy wrasse, 1coral beauty dwaft angel, 2x cleaner shrimps (normally don't work but eat pellets..).

Meantime, I will continue to maintain & upgrade water quality & conrtol feeding with quality food. After a course of mediacted food for 5 days, I will resume Zoe + Zoecon soaked food for them.

Leaving the tank fallow for 6 weeks may be the next big thing I have to do. But meanwhile, I just have to get them be strong & healthy before movingthem to other tanks for fallowing.
I maintain a SG of 1.018 now and keep good quality water regime, feed healthy... for may be a month. I probably wont go lower salinity to 1.009 or less now. Leaving tank fallow will be more effective in eradicatin all parasites, be it velvet or Ich or flukes..? .

Once again, Thanks so much to you and terry. Also thanks to baobao and danorth for participation. My emperor angel is getting better by the day. Happy me. .

 

[danorth]

Any one has picture of marine velvet? My emperor has lost all mucus and is off color now. I suspect it iwas Velvet whcih started it all? [/B][/QUOTE]


Here is an old pic of what I believe was a case of marine velvet, it had a very light gold dust of extremely small spots on it.

 

[blueplanet]

Danorth, Tks for the pic. poor picaso. .
If Velvet is so deadly and that my emperor is recovering now may just be that it wasn't amyloodinium that started its sickness.
I really appreciate your pic. at least its the first time I see with my eyes what they meant by marine velvet.
On the other hand, since emperor and regal angel are yellow in their base color. it is possible that it is harder to see gold dust on them. Some time, it may turned out to be "off color' especially on the head?