Pop-eye in Emperor Angel

[spawn_e_git]

My Emperor angel seems to have pop-eye.

I say "seems to" as most of the posts and information I find talks about the eye being swollen and cloudy.

My fish only has it in one eye. The eye has a silver ball in it which is just a reflection of the air bubble.

The eye started swelling Thursday last week and today the bubble is bigger that ever. I did a water change the Monday before and this does stir up the water a lot and I suppose there was small bubbles in the tank.

Has anyone had this before?

If the eye was cloudy or showed signs of infection I would medicate the tank. However, I see no cloudiness and it is only one eye. I can still see the eye perfectly behind the bubble.

The other eye is perfect.



The fish is still swimming ok. Appetite is depressed but it does feed a bit. It usually is a voracious feeder but I had a case of white spot a few months back and it stopped eating for a couple of weeks and then was back to normal.

The fish is very fat and I'm not too concerned at this time about the lack of eating.

Do anyone know what can be done for this or should I just leave it and hope it will sort itself out?

Here is a couple of pic's

 

[caseyjones]

Is it a fish only tank? Do you run copper? Too much copper will cause popeye, although that doesn't look like popeye. Its hard to tell from that angle. I've seen eyes bulged out almost a half inch.

 

[spawn_e_git]

It is a FO tank but copper has not been used for quite some time.

The eye has an air bubble in it. There is no sign of cloudyness in the eye.

The bubble went down but then came back again.

I see the fish bump it into a rock last night so I have now removed all rocks so there should not be anything to injure it on.

The fish is swimming ok and is active but feeding has been greatly reduced.

It is still "pecky" after two weeks. This happened to it when it had a bit of white spot some months ago. It took about 3 weeks before it fed properly.

It's no being bullied or anything as it is the dominant memeber of the tank.

Here is a couple of pic's from today

And here:

 

[Angela Short]

One eye is ussually due to injury, 2 eyes is something else. Have you stayed on top of your water changes? Good water can do wonders with healing a fish. I would just watch it to make sure it doesn't get worse at this point.

 

[Bebo77]

pop eye is also caused by stress... is this fish fighting with tank mates?

 

[spawn_e_git]

It's only in the left eye. The right eye is as normal.

The fish is nto being bullied by anything. It is probably the most dominant fish in there. The is a Niger trigger but it's not agressive.

Water quality is as good as I can make it considering the type of fish in the tank (Lion, Moray, Trigger and three Puffers).

The eye did start to go down but then came back up again.

as I said I saw it bump it against a rock so I have removed all the rock in the tank. There was only two pieces of rock.

This thread well over a week old now. When I 1st put it up I was a little concerned that it would spread to the other eye but as the weeks (s) have passed, the other eye is still clear and normal size.

Feeding is my main concern now. The fish has gone from an active fish that competes for its' food to waiting for the other fish to finish then "picking" at the bits of shrimp/mussle on the substrate.

The fish does not look thin and it's colours are still clear. It did this feeding style before when it got a mild case of White Spot. Again, it took about a week for the White Spot to clear but another two weeks before it was 'up for' feeding.

It's almost like it's scared to feed as it thinks that feeding has caused the eye/whitespot and it thinks if it eats again it will get worse.

Silly thought I know but it does seem that way.

I'll keep this thread updated.

 

[spawn_e_git]

Just an update.

The eye has almost returned to normal size. There is a tiny little bubble in the eye but nothing like what it was.

The main problem now is feeding.

It used to (a long time now) eat everything and compete with the other fish for food.

Now I never see it feed. It used to take Krill/Brine/Mysis whole shrimp/cockle.

Now it takes nothing. I've tried Garlic, algae, dried food but nothing

It swims right past food, it is looking thin and depressed. It will swim around and then sit for long times in one corner of the tank.

As I said in the earlier posts, it did this before with some WS but this cleared up and about two weeks later it was back to it's feeding self.

There is not redness around the mouth/gills,

Any ideas, the only thing I have not tried in live food such as ghost shrimp/live brine.


I'll have to get some of these tomorrow and try but I really don't want to lose this fish.

If only the damn thing would EAT!!! The eye injury has cleared, it's still swimming about but does not seem interested in food.

I've added a small (very small) amount of copper treatment to help if the immune system is low due to lack of food.

If I can get this fish feeding again it will survive but otherwise time is running out for such a lovely and normally active/dominant fish.

Does anyone have any ideas to get this b**ch feeding again?