Discoloration & Fast Breathing?

[vaporize]

Hi Lee,

This is a question I have for both myself and my breeder friend whom I get fish from.

Recently out of my tank raised batch of clownfish (i.e. acclimated and lived with me since May), I added two clowns from my breeder friend that might carried some sort of disease. I cannot determine the exact disease and thought I would have to solicit your help.

The only symptom to the disease seems to be very slow killing, before the fish die, they usually begin with some sort of discoloration (on orange clownfish) and almost like a very thin white mucus on it, and fast breathing. The disease seems like water borne also, as I have top & bottom tanks linked by the overflow and return pump. Upon immediate release of the new fish into the top system, there is a fish in the bottom tank that died within 2-3 days (those fish have lived with me for 2 years).

After following your posts religious for almost 2 years and battling ich/velvet/brook constantly with newly arrive wild fish, I can almost sell these parasite by just taking a look at the fish. This disease is nothing like brook or velvet. However at the terminal stage, the fish does have the same fast breathing as velvet/brook but of course fast breathing does not give much hints.

After troubleshooting this for a long time, I finally talked to my breeder friend and determined that those fish might have introduced the disease into my system as he has been battling this unknown disease for awhile. It seems this unknown disease take 1-2 fish per week but it certainly is nothing like fast killer that brook or velvet has.

After going over to examine over 20-25 pairs in his system, I cannot determine any that shows the signs of brook (lose skin) or velvet's dusty white spot. I can understand that velvet does not always show dusty white spot but show some symptoms like brook, but out of all the infected fish, there must be ONE that shows that. On that front, NONE of the fish shows the typical brook loose white skin symptoms but only a discoloration or plae white on the skin. Plus it is killing fish way too slow, it has been almost 2-3 months since he first noticed the problem.

I would imagine in a closed system, velvet or brook would kill all his broodstock by now; as you said, brook only transfer by skin contact. His system is set at 1.020 and all connected for the broodstock.

He told me that he first see the fish showing problems after:
(1) He moved the established broodstock into a new system
(2) He fed some expired vitamin mixed in the food to his fish, then shortly the some fish stopped eating and start to have those dying symptoms. He only found out after the fact.

After looking at the observations, I would think:

• This might not be of the typical brook/velvet/ich parasitic nature
• FW dip does not seem to help alot
• This might be of a bacterial nature disease and the bacteria might come from the spoil food (not sure if this is of any hints)
• white feces are seen in some, but I would think internal parasite would not kill fish by showing "white film on skin" and "fast breathing" but without much external symptoms. White feces is also an indication of bacterial infection isn't it?

I am wondering if you can think of anything that might shows very light white film and fast breathing. I do have a variety of medication in my disposal:

• furan-2, maracyn2 for FW, erthyomycin, neomycin, tetracycline, cupramine, chealted copper, triple sulfa, formalin3, methylene blue, malachite green, prazipro, sulfathiazole, metrodiazoie, kanamycin,

At this point I am a bit devastatiated. The fish are all eating but once they develop the white film & fast breathing, it seems it take them out in 1-2 days.

Thanks for any insights.

[leebca]

This is one of those situations where the only suggestion I have is to seek professional help.

The condition obviously has a very significant impact on your breeding efforts and those of your friend. Neither of you should be spreading this condition and your friend/colleague doesn't seem to be a very good friend to have given you the fish with the knowledge there is a problem in his system. Both you and he should quarantine your whole operations until this is resolved. Neither trade, exchange, give or sell any of your marine life until this is resolved.

Pre-arrange with a university or college of veterinary medicine to bring in a sick fish. They will do the usual skin scraping, gill and fin clip for evaluation. They may run cultures. They will/should also euthanize the sick fish in order to perform a thorough necropsy. From such an investigation they should be able to provide guidance. It is important to bring them a living sick fish.

[vaporize]

Thanks Lee, I will try to dig up some vet medicine college in my area and rest assure that nothing from that system is going out to the market for myself.

I find that sometimes the disease we see from aquacultured speciemens tend to be somewhat different than the ones coming from wild caught fish. I am not sure if this is due to the drugs resistant nature that they might have developed. I have encountered similiar 'hard to diagnosis' disease from another US famous profesional breeder last year and ended up disinfect and shut down the whole system.

thanks for the help.

[leebca]

You may be correct.

It's a hard thing to do to voluntarily quarantine a whole operation, but there is a 'higher purpose.'

[carlc]

You have a very good Vet. school in Guelph. Don't know how far you are from it though.

Carl

[vaporize]

Carl, please do introduce or let me know the contacts, I think we will have to travel to Guelph if needed to. I cannot find anybody locally.