Sick ram, help!

[severum mama]

I just got home from work and looked in my 29 gallon, and one of my Bolivian rams is really not doing well. He's swimming erratically with his head pointed up, and sometimes just floating around in the current. This is the tank that I lost a ram from a couple weeks ago, but other than that there are no signs of illness in the tank, and this fish was not sick last night. His fins are a little tattered but nothing that would be a mortal injury, but his color really doesn't look good. The weird thing is, I keep some pretty delicate fish in there and they seem fine. Tankmates are 1 Bolivian ram, 6 rummy nose tetras, 7 green fire tetras, 1 clown pleco, 1 farlowella acus, and 1 amano shrimp.

I have no QT tank (I know, I've committed a cardinal sin of fishkeeping). The best option I have is to move the sick ram to my 20 gallon, and move the healthy ram out of the 20 gallon into the 29 gallon so the healthy one doesn't pick on the sick one. The sick one will have to live with 7 gold pristella tetras and a small flying fox if I do that. It is possible that it's just his time. I chalked up my recent loss to old age (it was my biggest ram), and the sick ram was bought at the same time as the one I just lost, and I've had them for over a year. I know their lifespans really aren't too long. Do you all think this is old age or does this sound like any diseases you can think of? Grrrr... my fish never get sick...

I'm going to test the water now and post results in a few minutes.

TIA

 

[severum mama]

Ok, I tested the water...
Ammonia=0 ppm
Nitrite=0 ppm
Nitrate=10 ppm
pH=7.0-7.2 (can't tell for sure)

Now he's swimming around in circles and upside down and stuff.... please help! I'm moving him to the 20 gallon where at least he'll get picked on less.

 

[An t-iasg]

I don't have rams -- but when my betta swam in sideways circles and then fell nose-first on the gravel, I did google searches and this symptom seems to point to parasites. If you have any parasite meds, use them now. Jungle makes one that you feed to the fish also, to try to get rid of the internal ones, which I now believe is what my betta died from, and it may be affecting your ram too. My betta lived a nice long life also, and died instantly after swimming in about 3 or 4 circles.

 

[severum mama]

Well, he's not dead yet, but I figure he will be within a few hours. He's laying on the bottom in a cave and barely even moving his fins. None of the tetras are picking at him so at least he will go relatively peacefully.

I don't know anything about parasites, my fish have never really gotten sick, but I would think that parasites would affect all fish in a tank. Is that right? Should I treat my whole tank for parasites? If I do, should I move my shrimp out first?

 

[An t-iasg]

Here's a link I found: http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/disease/p/whirling.htm

It says the disease is slow in progression and not always caught in QT. My betta was a little over a year old and I never had to treat him for anything. Menagerie and I discussed the possiblilty that I got him with the disease and it didn't affect him until he got older and possibly weaker. He was never sick, and just died suddenly.

Here's a med that says it works on protozoans:
http://www.aquariumguys.com/formalin3.html

If you use this, it's probably a good idea to remove the shrimp, as it may be sensitive to this med.

 

[severum mama]

Well, I moved the fish so that shrimp wouldn't be a problem anyway. My LFS doesn't have this med and quite frankly I don't think it would do any good. I am really surprised he made it through the night. I actually thought he was dead twice this morning but found out he was alive when I tried to net him out. I feel so sorry for the little guy but I don't think there is anything that I could do for him. I'm quite sure he will have passed to the big tank in the sky by the time I get home from work.