# HELP fish bent in a circle and dieing!



## s.patelski (Nov 11, 2009)

Help, my fish are dropping like...sick fish

They look like they are in pain. Writhing and bending in a circle.

Fishless cycled, Fish went in on New Years
Water changes every week at least 25% We use Aquasafe and we have a carbon filter on our house.

Size 125 gallons
GH 250 hard
KH 150
pH 7.8
0 ammonia
0 Nitates
0 Nitrites

I have de-wormed with parasite clear 1 time per week for three weeks due to flashing.

It all started off with an injured fish or two( Lethrinops). Bit in the face presumably by the Julidochromis. The injury turned into an unknown type of infection within the day; I treated with Melafix for seven days, and used Fungus clear per instructions (did not clear the fin problem, but cleared up the wound on the head and the side). During the seven days we broke with ick so I treated with Quick cure for three days. The water was bad so we did a 50% water change and decided to do the salt and heat. Added 1 teaspoon per gallon in three doses 12 hours apart and raised the temperature 1 degree every hour starting at 80 and increased until it reached 85 to 86. I think it went terribly wrong. The fish were panting so I backed it off to 82 to 84. The next morning we had a dead O. litho. I found a Calvus bent in a circle, it died this evening. Our julies were both bent in a circle so into the hospital net. I did a 50% water change super slow during the day; 5-10% an hour to get rid of the salt and cooled the tank down 1 degree per hour until back to 80 degrees.

I just found one of our our petricola cats bent in a circle too. Super fast resp.swiming and coiling into a circle. Looks very painful.

What is this?

Over heated, over salted?

What a mess.


----------



## Cognition (Oct 14, 2009)

are you over-medicating maybe? and IMO a hospital net is not a great idea, because they still share the same water. Im just throwing my 2 cents in, im sure someone else has something


----------



## steelers fan (Jun 26, 2009)

are there any signs of illness now....if so what are they?
if not just keep their water pristine with at least 30% waterchanges every other day with vacuuming and keep the temp at 80.
when you did the heat and salt did you add any extra water movement?...heat can reduce the amount of dissolved 02 in the water.

*** found that unbelieveably clean water conditions clear up alot of problems


----------



## mlancaster (Jul 24, 2009)

s.patelski said:


> Fishless cycled, Fish went in on New Years
> Water changes every week at least 25% We use Aquasafe and we have a carbon filter on our house.
> 
> Size 125 gallons
> ...


Hi s.patelski,

I am not sure of the illness. However, you mentioned your Nitrates are at 0ppm. Did you ever have a nitrate reading above 0 during your fishless cycle?

It does look painful and I hope you can figure it out or they get better.

Thanks,
Matt


----------



## PfunMo (Jul 30, 2009)

I didn't mention it earlier but I am not a true believer in the carbon doing the full job that a dechlore product might. While the filter does do some I'm not sure it will do all you need done. As we do have a rather steep learning curve when keeping the first few tanks, and you do seem to have the problems, I might like to go with a chemical treatment like, Prime until you get your situation leveled out. Just one point to remove some doubt while you figure things a bit more. Clean water that you can trust fully is critical, I believe.


----------



## s.patelski (Nov 11, 2009)

symptoms:

pressure behind the eyes

muscle paralysis from mid way back to tail - never recovering use of muscles

rapid breathing

body has retained fluid - scales not protruding or hyper bloated, just full and little to no motion.

White stringy feces

in some cases seizures and twisting of body

fish lost to these symptoms:

(3) o. lithobates - Yellow Blaze (first to show disease) rapid signs of disease

(2) German Red Peacock - slowly came on

(1) syno. petricola cat (survived disease but never recovered from paralysis so I euthanized)

(2) a. calvus - Black Congo. rapid on set - also lost 1 to aggression so 3 total

(2) j. regani (survived disease but never recovered from paralysis so I euthanized both) male was "divored" over night and came down with disease the next day. Female came down with it after we took out "their rock" to get the male out.

(1) albino brushy nose pleco - found dead, black gut contents no symptoms prior

(1) lethrinops Green Face. Had been beat up prior(stress) also had fin rot after being bitten by julies.

(1) albino peacock - slowly came on over night

Have 3 that never showed dramatic signs of illness but have some symptoms and will probably recover somewhat:
(1) red sholder peacock(maybe hybred) is a little paralysed drags his tail a bit.
(1) Lemon Jake has pressure behind eyes, pumping gills
(1) Leleupi "orange" has some paralysis from mid body on to tail.

I found a very good diagnostic chart on national fish pharm dot com. fish disease diagnosis: Abdominal dropsy or "Malawi Bloat"? Just not as much bloated as paralysed.

A). The body cavity is filled with fluid, which often simply runs out when the abdominal wall is cut open The fish is affected with abdominal dropsy If both eyes are swollen, or you see damage to the lateral line, this is dropsy and is hard to cure. Try raising the temp up to 84 degrees fahrenheit. Treatment: Doxycycline/Kanamycin combo treatment for up to 2 weeks.

G). The fish is bloated up, has a reduced appetite and also has clear to white feces Your fish is affected with Hexamita. Very common in Discus and African Cichlids. This is referred to as "Malawi Bloat" Make a medicated frozen food with Metronidazole. Use 1/4 tsp. per 4 oz. of food. Feed to the fish once a day for 10 days. Or try treating the water with Parinox


----------



## mlancaster (Jul 24, 2009)

such a bummer....

Thanks,
Matt


----------



## richardjwaugh (Feb 7, 2010)

good luck. hope it all works out ok


----------



## steelers fan (Jun 26, 2009)

how are your fish now...did you do a bloat treatment???


----------



## s.patelski (Nov 11, 2009)

Treated for Bloat w/ "Jungle" Fungus Eliminator. Then did water change/vac. Then broke with Ich. Treated for 3 days w/ Quick Cure... and it worked.Everything is blue!
after all that:
this weekend we:
Lost leupei to paralysis/bloat
Lost Black upside down cat to bloat and possibly ich treatment aided in death. One of the Synodon Cats is showing signs of bloat in eyes and belly and stress by floating vertically in caves, then snapping out of it and darting,then stopping and going vertical again. 
Ich is over with .
Did 30% water change/sand-vacuum,slight rise in ammonia,keeping temp @ 80 for now, treating for fungus now with "Jungle" Fungus Eliminator. May go back to ich treatment after 3 days. Some fish seem completely unaffected by any of the disease.(got a female holding eggs!) I don't know how, they gotta be sick of all the meds!
All the silicone is Blue, the Vortex DE filter tubes are Blue, hate that, but some of the blue stuck in the cracks of the rocks looks kinda cool.
Just wanna stop all this , and enjoy my fish!


----------



## steelers fan (Jun 26, 2009)

i feel ya


----------



## PfunMo (Jul 30, 2009)

s.patelski--- While I'm sad that you have the trouble, it may save me a great deal of grief. The site you posted seems to be the most useful knowledge base I've found. While they may be posting it to increase sales, it is a great relief to me to find a site written by what I consider a real authority. While some of it will never be useful to the hobbiest with one sick fish it does show me they know much more about fish disease than anybody else I've run across. I'm sure an autopsy and microscopic analysis is out of my league but they seem well versed in the science rather than the guessing we most often have to get us by. =D>


----------



## BICKELL (Feb 9, 2010)

Symptoms

A). Is the body of one or more of the fish distorted by a curvature of the spinal column

Cause

a). The fish are affected by sporozoa
b). The fish are affected by tuberculosis
c). Dylox poisoning? Have the fish been recently treated with Dylox, Masoten or Trichlorfon?

Treatment

a). No suitable treatment known
b). Kanamycin + Vitamin B-6 Treat for up to 30 days
c). No suitable treatment known.


----------



## BICKELL (Feb 9, 2010)

http://www.nationalfishpharm.com/fish_d ... anges.html

Best site for diagnosing fish problems hope this site help you and everyone else with any fish related problems! :thumb:


----------



## wheatbackdigger (May 11, 2008)

Was this tank cycled to begin with? 0ppm nitrates makes me think it wasn't...I think its the combination of an uncycled tank and overmedicating/treating.


----------



## s.patelski (Nov 11, 2009)

The answer to the Question... Was our tank cycled?

Yes, We did a fishless cycle.

5ppm of ammonia which in our tank was 4TBS. Our Nitrite levels started to form at week two, starting out at .5 and spiking off the chart by day 20. Our Nitrate levels started showing at day 21 at 40-60 and as the days progressed with the addition of ammonia the levels of nitrates spiked and then backed off. Our tank was fully cycled by week four. We could add 4 TBS of pure ammonia and in 12 hours we had 0 ammonia, 0 Nitrites, trace Nitrates. We super cycled our tank.


----------



## s.patelski (Nov 11, 2009)

At this point we have one Lethrinops that has ick. We found that most of our deaths were due to a non-typical bloat while also being treated for ick where the ick medications and salt/heat combo just did them in. 
We live and learn.

When I euthanize fish, I put them in a ziplock with a small amount of water; place them in the freezer, their body functions shut down and they go to sleep very quickly.


----------



## LSBoost (Jan 21, 2010)

You should either do medications *or* salt/heat combo to treat ick. The higher heat will take away oxygen from the tank, the medication will also take away oxygen so that is why they should not be use at the same time. Since you have medication in it already, just slowly back down on the temperature to 80.


----------

