Not our week - sick Angel

[tsaraber]

This has been a horrible week for fish in this house. First the Betta's and now one of our Angelfish.

We bought two Angels for our 46 gallon tank, we've had them over a month now and one of them isn't growing. The other one is nearly twice the size already. I watched them eat yesterday and the 'sick' one acts pretty happy about the food but as I watched him he spent the entire time trying to get the same piece down - it would shoot out of his mouth and he'd try again. I don't think he managed to actually eat anything.

As for other symptoms he looks just fine but he is very still and hiding most of the time. Yesterday he had a long white stringy thing hanging from his middle - looked like it was supposed to be poo but I'm not sure it's supposed to be white.

Any ideas?

 

[tamtam]

how big are the flakes(is that what u feed)??? IME i always have to crunch up the food to make it smaller and easier for them to eat, so many ppl will feed there fish food that they have trouble swallowing or grabbing ahold of without realizing that and generaly crunching the food up makes it easier for them to eat. I dont really know if it will help, but its worked fo me and a few others.

 

[tsaraber]

I feed them the granules.

Earlier today I put him alone in the little breeder/fry type container that we have and I fed him some frozen brine shrimp to see if he would eat. He did but after a couple little bites it was like he had his fill. I let him loose in the main tank again and he did the same thing when I fed them all tonight - took just a couple of the granules and then he was done.

Maybe it's all the activity at feeding time stressing him out. There are 8 zebra danios in there and they create quite the commotion when they're eating.

 

[Essayons89]

White poo is a sign of internal parasites. I recommend palcing the fish in a hospital tank and dosing with praziquantel or Hex-a-mit.

HTH,
Bryan

 

[BrianNY]

Agree with Essayons. This shows all the classic symptoms of Hex which angels are known to carry. I'm usually succesful treating my discus with this using metro. It is however more effective at higher temps.

 

[tsaraber]

Thanks so much for the info.. I am currently looking more into what you provided.. From my searches so far hex-a-mit seems to be unavailable - one site said that aquatronics is out of business which sucks because I am a huge fan of their Kanacyn. The only praziquantel I found so far is for use in cats or dogs - still looking though..

However something one of you mentioned led me to a site with info on Capillaria which sounds a LOT like what our angel has - it says to treat with Discomed or Paragon.

I'm going to do some more looking and in the meantime make sure the hospital tank is setup. It's filled with water and heat but I don't have the filter in yet and I haven't checked the heat in awhile.

I noticed the white poo on another one of our angels - I wonder if we shouldn't just put them all in the hospital tank and treat them just in case...

Thanks for all your help!

 

[Essayons89]

On second thought, it may be best to treat the whole tank if more than one fish is infected. If you can't find Hex-a-mit , metronidazole will work.

Bryan

 

[tsaraber]

Thanks so much Bryan. That was my next question, if I should just treat the whole tank or what. I know I have at least two angels with similar symptoms.
I drove to the LFS (not real local, was a two hour trip but it's the only place I could find that carries anything useful) and got some metronidazole.

The tank contains 4 angels, 2 gourami (blue and gold), 8 danios and a chinese algae eater. The metronidazole won't hurt any of the other fish will it? Also the carbon has been in the filter for about a month, should I remove it before I start the meds?

I did some searching before I left and Hex sounds exactly like the problem - the Capillaria I mentioned supposedly leads to Hexamita so hopefully all bases are covered.

 

[BrianNY]

You're safe with the metro. Nix the carbon and bump the heat up to around 85 while treating. It works better in higher temps.

 

[tsaraber]

Good deal - nixed the carbon, haven't turned up the heat yet but it's at 84 already. We have a dual temp heater, I'll have to check what the max temp is and then try to turn it up tomorrow morning. Then dosed them with the Metronidazole which most of them were trying to eat. I'm going to assume (hope) that isn't a problem since the stuff can be mixed with food.

Thanks a bunch for all your help guys. I don't know how people ever got along before the internet.

Oh yeah - I called around to some of the more local stores and asked if they had Hex-a-Mit or Metronidazole, told them I had an angel with what looked like Hexamita - of course no one had either med but one of them tried to get me to come buy Maracyn. He doesn't even sell the stuff officially, he was going to give me some from his own stash.

 

[BrianNY]

Crush the metro into as fine a powder as you can and just pour it in the tank. It only stays active for 8 hours. I find it works best with 50% daily water changes and treatment for 5 consecutive days. Good Luck

 

[tsaraber]

Hmmmm, out of curiousity - did I end up with a different Metro?

I have Seachem, the bottle doesn't say anything about water changes or daily dosing and it's already a really fine powder (sorta)...

Doesn't mention heat either but that doesn't mean much. It does say to treat every two days until symptoms disappear. Gotta say it seems to be working wonders already - the sick little angel is out and about but the two of them still have the stringy white poo.

 

[Essayons89]

Just keep up with the treatments, a second course may be necessary after the initial five day treatment. As with all diseases, be sure to continue treatment for a few days even after all symptoms disappear.

Good luck with all of them.

Bryan

 

[tsaraber]

Thought I'd let ya'all know how things turned out.

We treated with the Metro, per the instructions on the container, every two days until symptoms disappeared and the temp was around 82-84 during this time.

The little silver angel that caused us the most concern in the beginning seems to have pulled through and is doing fine. One of our black angels died this past weekend though. We had just started a second round of treatment after noticing he wasn't getting any better. Poor little guy..