Very sick Jawfish

[ThRoewer]

Last Saturday I found a male and female Blue Spotted Jawfish at a local store.
At home with stronger light and magnification glass I noticed that the male had a rather well advanced ich infection.
So after the mandatory formalin bath both went straight into TTM.

Sunday they were both fine, active and eating. Monday as well, though late in the evening the male was not sticking his head out of his hole all the time like before, but he came out to eat.

This morning I found him out of his hole and clearly not well. The female looked and behaved OK.

I did an immediate tank transfer and lowered the salinity to 1.008 kg/l.

This is him after the transfer:

I also took some videos - I will upload those when I get home.

The thing that worries me the most are the white patches and his slimecoat/skin coming of in patches.
I'm wondering if I need to add antibiotics.

Has anybody experience with how ich on these guys normally looks like?

 

[ginpang]

[emoji33] hopefully not bsj disease !!! Or TB... Even if it's a secondary infection from the ich ... Antibiotics would probably be a good idea.

Just if it's only scale or slime coat damage from " over handling " ... Like if it took the guy 6 try before netting the fish, that should heal on it's own.

 

[Bogue Chitto]

That sure is a shame, I hope you can save that fish, I really like jaw fish.

 

[snorvich]

[emoji33] hopefully not bsj disease !!! Or TB... Even if it's a secondary infection from the ich ... Antibiotics would probably be a good idea.

Just if it's only scale or slime coat damage from " over handling " ... Like if it took the guy 6 try before netting the fish, that should heal on it's own.

I would speculate it is blue spot jawfish disease but I have only seen it once before in real life. Antibiotics may help.

 

[MrsReefK]

No good advice or input from me. But good luck!

 

[HumbleFish]

If it is BSJ disease, I've had success treating that with kanamycin + metronidazole.

 

[ThRoewer]

What is Blue Jawfish Disease?

The antibiotics I have on hand are:
- Amoxicillin
- Cipro
- Septra
- Metro
- BiFuran

Which would be the best?

This was this morning right after the transfer:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hNxQekCykf8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MrAUxCzVYWQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The breathing has slowed down to near normal and he is moving around, but hasn't dug a new burrow.

 

[ThRoewer]

OK, I dosed BiFuran for now since it's the only one I can dose on a one gallon scale.

The fish definitely has ich - a quite heavy load. Whatever else is involved seems to be rather secondary.

 

[snorvich]

An interesting thread.

 

[ginpang]

I've only used furan in freshwater so I'm curious on updates.

I would usually use neomycin for secondary infection from ich ( when erythromycin didn't work ) and TB ( ciproflaxin might also work since that's one of the antibiotics I was given when I caught mycobacterium Marinum from a rabbitifsh )

I'm not familiar with Septra... And twice now I've read this rumoured success of metro and kanamycin for bsj disease...

 

[ThRoewer]

He was still alive this morning. He still looked all torn up with strips of skin hanging off him and his fins slimed up, but seemed otherwise doing better. Though he isn't eating

The female is still fine so far and eating.

If BJD is actually a specific disease, it seems to be rather something bacterial or viral. Though the fact that it only affects Blue Spotted Jawfish makes me believe it is rather a special sensitivity or vulnerability of these fish to something than an actual disease.

I got to shoot Steve Robinson an e-mail about this.

 

[ThRoewer]

He is still hanging in, but not doing well:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tl2cSvlD3D0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[ginpang]

Very sick Jawfish

Ewww ...that skin peeling ... So sad...doesn't look like the bi furan is helping.
Maybe go with ciproflaxin the rest of the way !?
Or the metro + kanamycin...


That idea that it may be a specific sensitivity to something would make sense... It's worth looking into.

 

[oldbones]

The BSJ is a beautiful fish, but certainly not the easiest to keep. I lost two in QT to what looked like BSJ disease. The one that was healthiest and made it to the DT was doing quite well right up to the day that he found the 1/2" gap where a power cord passed through the frame of my screen top.

I wish yours the best, looks like you're doing all you can to save him.

 

[ThRoewer]

Last night it was only the 2nd dose of BiFuran - If there is no change after the 3rd and he is still alive I may switch to Cipro.

He is still alive, but not looking great. It seems he also has some intestinal troubles as his anus is protruding and very enlarged and the end of his belly is swollen.

Right now it doesn't look good for him...

 

[ThRoewer]

Well, he died before I could give the next dose.
He was likely already marked for death before I bought him ...

 

[ThRoewer]

As a clarification to the initial post here:
As it turned out, I got the sex of the fish above wrong - this was the female, not the male as I originally thought.
The actual male can be seen in this thread: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2560419

 

[Naraku]

TheRower,

You are not having much luck with fish recently huh... :sad1:

and here I thought my fish keeping skill sucked.
Sometimes, you do everything by the book and you still run into problems.

 

[ThRoewer]

The last two are still around and spawning by now.
I just wanted to correct my initial assessment that this was the male. In retrospect I know now that this fish was actually the female.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

 

[ThRoewer]

Here is the thread with a video of my current pair where the male doing his "mating dance": http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=24663562#post24663562

Though they were scratching today... :worried2: