Concerned about Rummy Nose Tetra

[Spider8ait1994]

I bought a school of Rummy Nose Tetras recently and one of them I am concerned about.
I’ve kept neons and Cardinals before but this is my first time keeping the Rummy Nose variety.

1~What type of fish is afflicted? In addition, please describe what is wrong with the fish to the best of your ability:
Species: Rummy Nose Tetra.
Concern: appears skinny and is often seperate from the school. Has been this way since I acquired it from the store.

2~What are your tank parameters (ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, temp, pH)? Please give exact values.
pH: 7
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 0.25ppm
Temp: 26°C

3~ How large is the tank? How long has the tank been set up?
Tank size: 130 Litre
Time since setup: 2 months

4~What type of filtration are you using? Please give the name and number and amount of gph if known.
Filtration: Aqua One Aquis 750 canister filter with spray bar output positioned just below the waters surface.

5~How many fish are in the tank? What kinds of fish are they and what are their current sizes?
8 Rummy Nose Tetras (this includes the one I’m asking about), 4 Cardinal Tetras and 1 Neon Tetra (the 1 neon was mixed in with the cardinals when I got them), 2 Pearl Gourami, 1 Coral Blue Dwarf Gourami, 1 Flame Dwarf Gourami, 2 Angelfish, 2 Spotted Silver Dollars, 2 Swordtails, 2 Pakistani Loach, 2 Siamese Algae Eaters, 2 Bristlenose Plecos, 3 Corydora (1 albino, 1 peppered and 1 Julii leopard)
Sizes: all tetras are ~2-2.5cm, both dwarf Gourami are ~4cm, the Pearl Gourami, spotted silver dollars, albino cory and 1 Angel are 4-5cm, both loach are 2.5cm, peppered cory is ~3 cm, leopard cory is 2.5cm, SAEs are both ~6cm and both Plecos are 6cm.

6~When is the last time you did a water change and vacuum the gravel? How often do you do this? How much water do you remove at a time?

Last water change: 3 weeks ago
Gravel vac: 3 weeks ago
Frequency: monthly at the most but if things still look good I’ll leave it a bit longer (ie an extra week or so)
% water change: ~30-40%

7~How long have you had the fish? If the fish is new, how did you acclimate it/them?
Timeframe: I got the Rummy Nose Tetras approximately 2 weeks ago.
Acclimation: I floated the bag in the tank for 10 minutes, after that I opened the bag and added some of the tank water in and let that sit for another 10 minutes before releasing the school into the tank.

8~Have you added anything new to the tank--decor, new dechlorinator, new substrate, etc.?
1 upright tree stump ornament (resin) and some live aquatic plants (blue stricta, variegated lime rush) all of which were washed/rinsed prior to adding in.

9~What kind of food have you been feeding your fish, have you changed their diet recently?
Food: I use Tetra brand Corywafers for the corys and loach, Tetra brand Plecowafers for the Plecos, Tetra brand XL Tropical color granules for the gourami, angels, spotted silver dollars and swordtails, the tetras eat API brand betta pellets though today I picked up some Pisces brand micro pellets in the hopes that the tetra I concerned about would be able to better eat the smaller sized food. The SAEs are happy to scavenge any leftover food that escapes the other fish.
I’m addition to this I also occasionally (once a month) drop in a frozen bloodworm cube.
I have attached a photo and also a gif of the tetra I’m concerned about. In the gif you can see the school swim past which helps show how skinny the one I’m asking about it in comparison. (Or maybe not…no idea what’s going on but it keeps uploading my gif file as a jpg…)
If anyone knows what’s going on and/or has any advice that would be great.

 

[Aiken Drum]

Can you confirm the nitrate reading. The lowest most test kits read is 5ppm, so im not sure how a 0.25ppm test result comes about. What test kit are you using?

You should be seeing more than essentially zero nitrate in a cycled tank. If its really that low i would question your test results, especially with such small, infrequent, water changes in such a heavily stocked tank.

Your fish may have intestinal worms. You could try deworming. Or it could just be a poor quality fish. 1 fish out of 8 you bought is probably pretty good going.

 

[Spider8ait1994]

Sorry about the Nitrate number I listed. I did make a mistake with that one so the result the test showed was actually 5ppm.
The test kits I use are:
Ammonia: API
Nitrate: API
Nitrite: API
pH: VitaPet Senior pH

I am considering getting an API brand pH test kit as they seem to be more in depth with the results and the kit I use for pH at the moment was just a basic one with no water level line on the test vial (which I believe is also plastic rather than glass).
Would you reccomend also I get a Hardness test kit too?
But yes I was wondering if I’d just gotten a ‘dud’ fish since this particular one has always been like this and the store I got them from isn’t the best (at least 60% of the time I go in most of their tanks are some stage of green, some fish dead or visibly unwell, bare tanks with no substrate and just 1 rock and fake plant at the most) so I do usually try to avoid sourcing from there. I did however see it having a go at the micro pellet food I bought today so I’d imagine that’s a good sign so I’ve confirmed that it is eating.
How would I know if there’s a worm issue and if required what would you reccomend to treat it?

 

[Colin_T]

It's either intestinal worms or gill flukes.

Intestinal Worms like tapeworm and threadworms cause the fish to lose weight, continue eating and swimming normally, and usually do a stringy white poop. Fish can do this for months and not be too badly affected. In some cases, fish with a bad worm infestation will actually gain weight and get fat and look like a pregnant guppy. This is due to the huge number of worms inside the fish.

You can use Praziquantel to treat tapeworm and gill flukes. And use Levamisole to treat thread/ round worms. If you can't find these medications, look for Flubendazole, which treats both lots of worms.

In the UK look for:
eSHa gdex contains praziquantel that treats tapeworm and gill flukes.
eSHa-ndx contains levamisole and treats thread/ round worms.
NT Labs Anti-fluke and Wormer contains flubendazole.
Kusuri wormer plus (contains flubendazole) - sold mainly for discus, comes as a powder which is quite hard to dose in smaller tanks
Sera nematol (contains emamectin)

Remove carbon from filters before treatment and increase aeration/ surface turbulence to maximise oxygen levels in the water.

You treat the fish once a week for 4 weeks. The first treatment will kill any worms in the fish. The second, third and forth treatments kill any baby worms that hatch from eggs inside the fish's digestive tract.

Treat every fish tank in the house at the same time to prevent cross contamination.

You do a 75% water change and complete gravel clean 24-48 hours after treatment. Clean the filter 24 hours after treatment too.

Do not use the 2 medications together. If you want to treat both medications in a short space of time, use Praziquantel on day one. Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate on day 2 & 3. Treat the tank with Levamisole on day 4 and do a 75% water change and gravel clean on day 5, 6 & 7 and then start with Praziquantel again on day 8.

The water changes will remove most of the medication so you don't overdose the fish the next time you treat them. The gravel cleaning will suck out any worms and eggs that have been expelled by the fish. Repeating the treatment for 3-4 doses at weekly intervals will kill any worms that hatch from eggs. At the end of the treatment you will have healthier fish.

 

[Spider8ait1994]

Ok I’ll definitely have a look around for that. Just for ease of treatment would it be worth setting up my currently unused 9 Litre as a quarantine and treatment tank for this tetra?
As for working product I do actually have some Vitafarm Wormout Gel on hand which according to the ingredients contains:
20g/L Praziquantel,
20g/L Oxfendazole.
Would this be suitable to use?
It’s intended I believe as a worming treatment for birds that you mix into their water but I used to use it for one of my rescue beardies.

 

[Colin_T]

There's no point using a quarantine tank for this. If you are going to treat the fish for intestinal worms, just treat the entire tank because there are probably worm eggs in the tank now, and the other fish probably have worms too. You should also treat all the tanks you have at the same time to prevent cross contamination.

I'm not sure what Oxfendazole does to fish so I would pass on that product.

If you can't find any fish medications with praziquantel, most dog and cat tapeworm treatment is praziquantel and you can buy praziquantel tablets from various stores, pet shops or vets. But there should be products available in Australia that are designed for fish.

 

[Spider8ait1994]

So I wasn’t able to find anything in my local area however I have ordered some in. Specifically Blue Planet Fluke & Tapeworm treatment which contains the Praziquantel. This is tablets you dissolve then add to the water at 1 tablet per 20L and says to do the initial dose then in 7 days a 25% water change and dose again.
It looks like it has good reviews and the place I sourced it from seems to have quick shipping.
I do have a question though. I noticed that things with praziquantel all seem to mention to be careful using it in tanks with snails and corydora catfish. You wouldn’t happen to have any insight into the reason for that.
My two currently in use tanks that I would be dosing each contain a Mussel (not sure whether that would fall under the category of snail what with being a mollusk) and the tank with the tetra also contains 3 corydora catfish.

 

[Colin_T]

Praziquantel is safe for Corydoras and so is Levamisole and Flubendazole.

Some snails and shrimp can die if exposed to some worming medications. Flubendaolze seems to be a big one for shrimp and snails. Praziquantel and Levamisole didn't affect any snails (unfortunately) in my tanks. It's about snails and slugs being similar to worms and some worming meds can kill them. As for mussels, no idea. They aren't really worms but are molluscs. Possibly try one mussel and see what happens. If it dies then remove the other mussels before treating. However, the mussels could have inhaled/ ingested worm eggs and might be able to expel them after, which could contaminate the aquarium again. I don't think that would happen but it might. If it doesn't kill snails it should harm mussels.

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The Blue Planet worming medication is fine. It treats tapeworm and gill flukes but won't affect round/ thread worms. These types of worm look like red or white hairs.

When you do a water change, do a 75% water change and gravel clean all the substrate. You should also clean the filter when you do this to remove worm eggs and parts from the filter.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it's added to the tank.

 

[Spider8ait1994]

Ok I haven’t noticed anything that looks like what you’ve described so hopefully what I’ve ordered in does the job.
I do use additives to the water when I do water changes and initial tank setups or for different requirements.
For the initial setup I used Seachem Stability to boost the cycling process.
Whenever I add new water I use API StressZyme + and API StressCoat +
Since both tanks contain live plants I also use API Leafzone weekly and API Root Tabs monthly.
I also on occassion (every 3-6 months) add some Pisces Vivid to bind together smaller particles and drop them to the bottom if there seems to be a lot drifting around.
Do you have any tips for gravel vacuuming? I have a Fluval gravel vac that’s a wide tube with a ‘gate’ to control the flow and a plastic grate insert to catch larger objects then the tubing with a hand pump siphon but there always seems to be bits and pieces left in the substrate and I frequently have an issue with the gravel getting sucked up into the initial tube so I worry that’s blocking debris from actually getting vacuumed out.
Should I invest in one of those gravel vacs with the wider flared end? If so would you say to go one that’s slightly longer that the tank height or slightly shorter? My tank is 42cm high but the two size options I’ve seen available here are I believe 40cm or 45cm

 

[Spider8ait1994]

Good news bad news

Sorry to double post (if that’s still something that’s frowned upon nowdays)
The bed news: the tetra in question passed away this evening.
The good(ish) news: I scooped the body out of the tank and kept an eye on it. I did NOT see anything come out of the body and in addition I gave the body a bit of an investigation and took some photos of the gills and an abnormality I found which I can post if it would be helpful.
Upon lifting the gill covers I noted that the gills on both sides were a nice pale pink rather than red and inflamed so I’d assume that rules out flukes. Additionally while the fish was alive I never noted any rapid breathing or attempts to itch itself which I’ve been reading can indicate flukes.
None of the other fish in my tanks are displaying any rapid breathing or itching behaviour either and all appear to have a healthy figure (ie no bloating and no wasting)
Aside from the thin figure of the fish that passed the only abnormality I found was with the right eye. I don’t know if this was present when I obtained the fish or not because it wasn’t noticeable unless I really looked up close which is difficult to do with a live fish.
The eye was vaguely larger than the left eye but only barely. The main different I noted was that the iris seemes to be slightly enlarged and off centre.
This leads me to wonder whether that had anything to do with the state of the fish? Maybe it couldn’t see well due to whatever was going on with the eye and this was unable to eat sufficiently through not being able to spot food? Might also explain why it was always isolated from the group (couldnt see well and was unable to locate and follow the school).
As a precaution I will dose the tanks with the worming treatment when it arrives though it doesn’t seem works or flukes was the issue with the tetra.

 

[Andy Sager]

With schooling fish like Tetras, there is always the possibility that this was either a younger fish, an older fish or just a weaker fish. Since you said it was not "normal" from the beginning, you probably got the fish this way so the cause was not something from your tank or the rest of the school would have had the same reaction. If the fish was being picked on or harassed by other members of the school, it could cause the fish to stop eating and to hide which could account for the skinniness.
In the future, if you have this kind of situation, before medicating, place the fish in a separate tank away from the school. If it's a bullying issue, the fish has a better chance of recovery alone. Once it is eating and healthy, it can be reintroduced to the school with a better chance of survival. If it does not eat when alone, you then start looking for medical causes and possible medical treatment.
Sometimes, you have to think like a fish. They do have a psychology to their actions.

 

[Colin_T]

If you can post a picture of your gravel cleaner, it might help me understand how it's set up.

The following link has an image of a basic model gravel cleaner that is all you need.
https://www.about-goldfish.com/aquarium-cleaning.html

When you use a gravel cleaner, the gravel should get sucked up into the wider tube where it circulates and drops back down. The lighter food and waste gets drawn up and out with some of the water. There are videos on YouTube showing people using a gravel cleaner. Maybe watch a couple to make sure yours is doing the right thing.