Juv Clarion Angelfish heavy breathing, pelase help!

[laguero]

Hi Guys,

Hope everything is ok.

I really need your help here. I do have a juv clarion angelfish that has been with me for 6 days.

He has been in quarantine, with 1 round of Prazipro, the fish has been eating aggresively pellets, green and pruple algae, and flakes with no problems until last night. Yesterday at 8:00 pm he ate perfectly fine, then around 11:00 pm I noticed, heavy breathing and showing abnormal swimming behavior, it is not like he cannot swim but it is just not swmming normally. Like if he would have a problem with the swimming bladder or something. This morning he didn´t eat anything.

Thinking that could be a ammo spike in quarantine or a problem with the water of some sort I decided to move him into my DT wich is properly mature and with pristine water quality.

As a nothe there was a lot of microbuble in the quarantine coming the skimmer due the prazipro. I mean a lot of microbubbles.

Do you have any suggestions? in your experience would this be a problem with the chemistry of the watter, or could the fish be sick due infection or parasites?

Let me post a video I took this morning, sorry for the quality but the cel phone was the only camera I had handy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDBEqb9zdtM&feature=youtu.be

 

[wooden_reefer]

The correct procedure was:

1. Cycle medium for QT then

2. Buy fish to QT.

Chances are that there should be zero ammonia in QT if you had done so.

In QT, the most important is against protozoan (ich oodiumum etc). The second is bacterial infection. Macro parasite is next down the list and I generally wait until the last phase of QT.

If you are not seeing protozoan infestation, then breathing fast is likely ammonia or bacterial infection.

Is it doing better in the DT?

You are not following a sound procedure.

 

[Mrscribbled]

The skimmer is suppose to be turned of while using prozi pro, and you should always have established filter media in a qt.

 

[laguero]

Hi

First of all, thaks so much for your responses.

The quarantine has been up and running for almost a year now. I use live rock as media filter, around 40 lbs. What I do when there is no fish in the QT is to empty the tank and just leave the sump with the LR running. When I'm ready to bring home some new fish, a week before, I fill the tank with new salt watter and power on the skimmer and heater. I do this because energy costs are prohibitive here in MX. This method has worked fine for me, however this time I guess something failed, and what I miss was to check ammo, no2 and no3 every day.

After 7 hours in DT the fish looks preatty much the same, still heavy breathing, maybe a little less lethargic, but almost the same. He is clean in eyes, fins and body, with no redness, injuries or signs of external parasites.

A soon as I leave the office I'll go for a new ammo test kit, as I ran out last week, that's why I failed to test these days. I will test ammo and nitrite in QT to verify if the clarion is suffering for ammo or nitrite poisoning.

Luis

 

[wooden_reefer]

Hi

First of all, thaks so much for your responses.

The quarantine has been up and running for almost a year now. I use live rock as media filter, around 40 lbs. What I do when there is no fish in the QT is to empty the tank and just leave the sump with the LR running. When I'm ready to bring home some new fish, a week before, I fill the tank with new salt watter and power on the skimmer and heater. I do this because energy costs are prohibitive here in MX. This method has worked fine for me, however this time I guess something failed, and what I miss was to check ammo, no2 and no3 every day.

After 7 hours in DT the fish looks preatty much the same, still heavy breathing, maybe a little less lethargic, but almost the same. He is clean in eyes, fins and body, with no redness, injuries or signs of external parasites.

A soon as I leave the office I'll go for a new ammo test kit, as I ran out last week, that's why I failed to test these days. I will test ammo and nitrite in QT to verify if the clarion is suffering for ammo or nitrite poisoning.

Luis

I hope your Clarion recovers in DT.

If you wait a year without bioload, most nitrification bacteria in your QT medium will have died. While there is generally a dormancy period during which nitrification bacteria will not die due to lack of ammonia, this period is likely only weeks, may be two months.

To save energy, you can leave the QT without heat or circulation, just add enough RO water to maintain salinity and feed the bacteria with a low source of ammonia. Sure, the bacteria population will drop drastically, but you can recharge it when you need it by applying heat and circulation and just one shot of several ppm ammonia. The recharging will take only a fraction of the time of a new cycle, likely a week to ten days. You do so before you buy any fish for QT.

In fact, you should put about 1 ppm ammonia in QT every 72 hours or so twice or three times while the angel is in DT. The chance of an ich outbreak in DT is high and you have to be ready.