skinny fish

[scott.cummings]

Please help

I have a 55 gallon tank with 70#LR. It has been up and running for almost a year. We have a number of corals, a cleaning crew and 7 fish. nitrates and nitrites are zero. change 10 gallons at least once a month. Everything has been healthy and growing. 3 days ago, our firefish started looking skinny. 2 days ago the yellow tang started looking skinny. now they are virtualy emaciated. they eat fine just like they have been but they are litterally wasting away before our eyes. everything else looks and acts normal. they dont have ich, spots or anything else odd looking other than extreme weight loss. it has happened in a matter of 3 days. any ideas what it may be and how to treat it? I dont think they will last through the week.

[Curtswearing]

Hopefully someone here would have experienced this before. I don't see why they would get skinny so fast unless they had some sort of infection or parasite. I guess the other possibility is that their fish food is lacking in some sort of vitamin, mineral, fatty acid etc.

You might want to buy some nori (dried seaweed) from an Asian grocery store for the tang. Maybe buying a different brand of fish food would do the trick as well or make some blender mush for them.

What do you feed them now?

[scott.cummings]

Pardon me, but i have forgotten the brand name but they are number 1 and 2. one is a red meat food and 2 is a green vegetable food. i also give a little mysis shrimp and flake once in a while.

[Witfull]

have you fed any live foods lately? this can introduce internal parasites. you can also try a spinich leaf for the tang.
another possiblility is stray current, yet remote.

cut back on your flow for a few day so they dont have to burn as much energy swimming. try feeding a fresh grocery store shrimp soaked in RO then diced small...this has lots of protien and may help bulk them up.

[Curtswearing]

Sounds like Ocean Nutrition Formula 1 and Formula 2. Both are balanced foods. Maybe feeding them smaller amounts more often for a while will help.

[JeepersReefers]

I had a red Coris wrasse with the same problem. It was also in a 55g, but it was a fish only system and he was the only one to be affected. The triggers and the lion were all fine and eating like pigs. I had no idea how or what was going on with the wrasse at the time, I was too new to the hobby. I caught the fish and took him to the LFS where they put him in a tank with high levels of copper and other medicines(I think it was malafix(sp)). The fish lived although I never got him back, it was sold on accident.

[ScottT1980]

MY guess, intestinal parasites...

I know it sounds rediculous and drastic, but you can actually have a veterinarian run a fecal on the fish (I have done them). Typically, catching the fish, squeezing out some poop, and then saving the poop, is just way to much trouble and can be far too stressful. But hey, if you are really serious about it, then there is an option for you.

I can't remember how you treat cases of intestinal worms/parasites in fish, but metronidazole might be an option.

Take er easy
Scott T.

[Dracunculus]

Metronidazole is an antibiotic which kills bacteria...will not touch the parasites.

[ScottT1980]

Also kills giardia...at least from what I remember....

Of course, whether or not giardia are SW tolerant or there is a SW tolerant species, I am unaware. Most likely a drug acting on nematodes (or perhaps even cestodes, although I don't know if that is a common fish pathogen) is needed...

Nemex for fish???

[Woodstock]

Metronidazole acts as an antibiotic as well as an anti-parasitic treatment. I've used it with great results.

http://www.tomgriffin.com/aquasource/ipmetro.html

"Metronidazole was originally developed to combat the parasites that cause amebiasis and giardiasis in humans. To put it kindly, both conditions wreak havoc on the human excretory system. To this day, the drug remains useful for both human and veterinary applications. It possesses both antiprotizoal and antibacterial qualities. To alleviate multiplying parasitic populations due to the stress of capture and transport, most imported reptiles (wild caught) receive a metronidazole/panacure cocktail upon arrival, if not before export. Many keepers of more expensive or delicate fish including discus, apistogramma, or wild caught cichlids consider metronidazole a "must have" for their fish medicine cabinet"

[ScottT1980]

Scott, I can ask around the vet school for possible treatment options if you would like. Most anti-parasitics, at least in mammals and in my experience, are the safest drugs and are very inexpensive. Therefore, at most clinics, docotors will treat without diagnosis, as the diagnostic tests are more expensive and perhaps even more dangerous (or at least more invasive) than the actual treatment.

[mps9506]

Just wondering how long has he been in your system?

FWIW, when yellow tangs start growing they require a ton of food. I always keep some fresh seaweed clipped in the tank for these guys.
One of the yellow tangs we had at a store I used to work at would eat an entire sheet of nori per day. Needless to say the tank was totally free of algae He did eat and poop a lot though.

Mike

[scott.cummings]

The tan is 5 or 6 months old. It has not been gradual weight loss. it has been in 3 days. the tang is not the only fish, a fire fish was the first one we noticed 3 days ago. it has been very very fast weight loss. are any of the treatments safe for a reef tank? i dont think i can take out the fish without tearing up the rockwork to catch them. i also dont want to hurt the coral or invertabrates.

[mps9506]

When I was doing my internship at the local aquarium we treated a few incoming fish with Metronidazole mixed into their food. Generally worked well, if they would eat it. Apparently it doesn't taste very good to the fish. This was used to treat internal parasites in local fish we caught.
I don't know if this is an effective treatment for SW fish or not. The biggest problem we ran into was actually getting the fish to eat the stuff.
I'm not an aquatic vet, so don't know to much about it, I just dosed as prescribed
Mike

[ScottT1980]

3 day weight decline? Hmm...sounds less like parasites now, although who knows. I will ask around...

BTW, Dracunculus, I am not sure as to the actual mechanism of action for metronidazole, but I think it is the same idea as using doxycycline for malaria. Protozoa must have similar epitopes, but again, I just don't know...