Losing 2 month old clowns

David M

David M

New member
I need some help deciding what the problem is, I'm losing 2 month +/- old clowns, three species. The ones that die are VERY thin and stay at the bottom, heads up and breathing hard & fast. On some of them their gills are very flared out. There are mollies in the system that are thin and shimmying but have no external sighs of trouble ( like crypto or oodinium). There are maybe 400 juvie clowns in there but the problem is it's connected to 6 pairs of breeders, I have to stop this quickly. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I'm losing 8-10 per day, mostly the smallest ones. Of 15-20 mollies only 3-4 are affected. The six adult clown pairs look fine and are even spawning right on cue. I am going to pull the mollies today and probably destroy them as I have nowhere else to put them and I certainly don't need this spreading to the other systems. System is 150 gallons, six tens above, 50 gallon tank with juvies in baskets and sump below. Mollies run free in the cut down acrylic tank to eat food that falls through the baskets. It's this one: ( doesn't show the six tanks above)



19883sterile_growout_tank_005.jpg
 
PURA, now!

PURA, now!

David, I had this exact problem. Use of Magnavore PURA filtration pads, changed out every 2 weeks cured it.

I don't know what it is, but I had a daily death toll as you are having of post meta clowns, very thin, sitting on bottom, breathing heavy.

I don't know why these pads cured it, but I will never stop using them. They are supposed to remove everything but the brothers from the water, and one of those things is what is killing your fish.
MD link .

If you have an account at Custom Aquatics, you can get them for 1/2.

You may also be able to find them at local stores.

If you can't find them right away, at least get some carbon filtration going, if not already. Good luck, and I really hope this helps.
 
Hi David

Dont you hate it when you get these mysterious things happening.

Personally i would strongly advise to remove all the mollies, including all the babies in any sumps, from my years of working in LFS mollies tend to be great carriers of diseases and dont always show but always carry disease.

after that a mega water change, perhaps replace the UV tube if it is getting close.

Christian
 
Well I'm certainly game to try the PURA pad, can't hurt. Odd that only this one system is affected if it is water quality, same source water in all systems and larval tanks. Big water X and removing the mollies to be sure but suddenly this crisis takes a back seat to another, LEAK !!!! The main GO system lost 35 gallons last night and has lost about 15 since I topped it off this morning. If it isn't one thing it's ten others :rolleyes: Just spent two hours looking for pond liner to salvage the Titan bin. No luck unless I wanna buy a 25' wide piece. I am now rigging air to all tank sections just in case the bin blows out and I lose circulation. Can I have my old job back now ? ( Help Mr wizzard, I don't wanna be a fish breeder any more) ...
 
My hypothesis is that it is not from the water source, but that the fish themselves put out a substance that kills off the smallest ones in our crowded systems. Is the affected system more crowded than the others? Has it been in service the longest? Do you bleach each tank before you put it in service again?
 
David,\
When Plumbing we used a PVC liner for custom shower bases under the tile that comes in 4' width rolls. Kind of expensive but you can glue the corners and make a tub if necessary. Sorry to hear of your troubles and hope this helps...Carl
 
Actually this is probably the most lightly loaded system I have. What changed is a few weeks ago I plumbed the 6 broodstock tanks above into it as I was making changes to the overall system. I have a problem in broodstock, if I don't pull nests early I lose them. So ironically a few weeks after doing this I have major problems with these juvies. The brood pairs seem fine.

It's only a few hundred fish thank God and all I care about right now is the breeders. I realy don't think the problem is going to effect them but I am still nervous.

Considering Kathy's "heavy metal" experience I placed a Poly Filter and a bag of Chemi- Pure in the system, lfs didn't have the PURA pad. I have had good experience with both Boyd products. Didn't get the mollies out yet, too busy working on the leak in growout. That is major, nearly 5 gallons/hour. On top of everything else I have 2 nest staring to hatch at 6/7 days, I wasn't ready to deal with that tonight. I plan to get up around 2:00 to top off the sump and have a pond liner lined up for 10AM tomorrow. What a life :rolleyes:
 
This sounds very familiar all of a sudden. Sounds just like what many aquaculture facilities experience when they mix juvenile fish with adult broodstock. Remember reading a paper with regards to viral nervous necrosis. Somehow the adults are already immune to this virus but somehow juveniles and fry are not. Might want to follow up on this to find out if it could be the cause. :)
 
I''m familair with viral nervous necrosis(VNN) at a white seabass hatchery. Our broodstock passed it on to the larvae and we ended up have to euthanize pools of larvae. This was all before we were using ozone water and eventually we stopped seeing signs of it. From what I understand the broodstock can be carries and then pass it off in the eggs. We always disinfected eggs with formalin and they were put into a separate system from all other fish in hatchery.

Sounds like you could have something like that but I hope not.

Aquaculture is fun huh? :D Just be glad you don't get phone calls in the middle of the night to go check a pump that has shut off or because a tank is overflowing. Lucky you it's all at your house! Well, I guess that could be pretty bad...

Good luck

Christine
 
I've had this exact problem before.
I believe it was probably internal parasites.
What I did was dose the growout system with Metronidazole to correct it. You cant over dose with this stuff so I layed it on. Took about two weeks to clear up.
 
It's not brook. Maybe Kathy is the hero here, no losses this morning and only two fish look bad but they are the fish that were suffering yesterday, maybe the Poly Filter and Chemi-Pure are helping. This all started when I connected those 6 broodstock tanks so I'm thinking you guys are right. That combined with my consistent loss of eggs at 5 days if I don't pull them makes me believe you are on to something here. What can I do? Any way to test for VNN ?

Obviously I need to seperate those adults but it's gonna take some fancy plumbing. Actually I think not, I'll move out the larvae instead and use that level for more brood tanks, that makes more sense as I was going to set up more 10 gallon tanks anyway.

I got up at 2:00 to fill the leaky sump, what joy. I have help comming in about an hour and the store opens at 10:00 for the liner. I am scared sh*tless to shut down the system in order to do this, there are over 1400 fish in there. No circulation for what, maybe an hour?? I have to remove some plumbing and the skimmer, that is the easy part. The bio-tower is the *****. I placed airstones in all the tank compartments last night and I have a few p-heads I can toss in there too. I'll move all the bio balls from the sump into empty sections of the tanks but I have to set up the tower somewhere to keep it running. Man this is fun :D
 
1400 fish will be fine with just airstones. I kept my fish all alive for 5 days with no power that way, battery operated air pumps.

A powerhead with some tubing directed to the top of the biotower will keep everything damp and alive.

You will be OK, and thanks for calling me a hero, even though I think it should be heroine (sp?, not the drug). but then I guess I am a dude.....
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8634883#post8634883 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Kathy55g
thanks for calling me a hero, even though I think it should be heroine (sp?, not the drug). but then I guess I am a dude.....
Click to expand...
You´ve got to forgive us,Kathy,you´re such an outstanding aquarist that we forget you´re a woman!:D :D :D
 
I only said "hero" because I wasn't sure about the spelling either :D

The project is complete, the liner is in place and all is well. Took about 2-1/2 hours.

Now I can move on to the next project, getting those juvies moved out. I'm afraid to put them into GO so they are gonna get their own little tank for a few weeks. Maybe two, they need to be sorted for size.

Also pulled 125+ mollies from GO, had no clue I had that many. I'm getting $1 ea from lfs :D The dozen or so in the problemed system I wil probably destroy.

Then I deal with another leak :rolleyes:
 
Still losing an occasional fish in the same way, very thin, flared gills and labored breathing. Now the problem has popped up in another tank of 5 weeks old ocellaris. This is a totally isolated 10g tank that gets only new water added to it. Absolutely no exposure whatsoever to the broodstock system. In fact it's even in a seperate room. No cross contamination by way of hands or tools that I can think of.

My helper had a thought, I have had several new pairs begin spawning in the past few months, larvae and juvies get mixed together and there is no way to know which are from what pair. Just maybe the problem is related to the parents themselves? IOW it is entirely possible that these dying fish all came from one specific pair. I am suspecting the pair I got from Nicole only because when I do keep their larvae isolated I have more die off at 3-7 days than with any other pair. For example right now I have three tanks of larvae from 3 different pairs, all 2 days apart. Tanks 1 & 2 have minimal die off, maybe two or three per day. The batch from Nicole's pair are dropping at 20-30 per day. Everything is absolutely identicle as much as I can make it so. It's just a thought...
 
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