# Sick fish! White faeces, listless, not eating...help!



## robh2919 (Aug 13, 2010)

Hi everyone. I'm new here and would really appreciated some help on this. I almost wasn't going to post on here because it seems to come up a lot on different forums but i seem to have covered many of the treatments that i've read about and i can't get shot of whatever this is!

Basically, had a 180L fish tank set up its been cycled for 5 months now. Firstly, i stocked it with a pleco from another tank, two angel fish, two keyhole cichlids, jewel cichlid and a male firemouth.

Everything was going fine for a few weeks, eveyrone was behaving, no bullying or any obvious problems until one of the keyhole cichlids started getting ill. Symptoms included white faeces, listless and staying hidden a lot, not eating and breathing heavily. Eventually i had to put it down as it was just floating around, unable to swim properly. Since then, i've lost the jewel cichlid and both angels to the same thing.

Thought i'd got a handle on the problem as no other fish were showing symptoms so i put in two new angels and a female firemouth. Unfortunately, recently the angels and yesterday the male firemouth started showing symptoms.

I first treated octozin followed by discus plus wormer. Since the new angels started showing symptoms i've treated again with octozin (both in tank and ground into their food) and epsom salts (2 teaspoon/10gallon). Currently in the tank is some pure metronidazole i managed to get from the vets (they gave me three 500mg/100ml I.V. bags and told me to dump it in). Nothing seems to be doing the trick. They seemed to get slightly (hard to say) more lively during the recent octozin treatment but since metro has been added they seem to have gone downhill again and now the firemouth has it. The firemouth is still eating but the angels aren't going near any of the food, they only show interest in blood worm which they swallow and then spit back out.

I've been doing 25 % water changes (as per the norm every weekend) and also larger ones in between meds.

Ammonia is 0, Nitrite 0 and Nitrate 5-10 ppm. Temp is 27.5 degrees C.

I'm currently waiting for some jungle internal parasite guard to arrive (its taking ages). I don't have access to a hospital tank but seeing as how its doing the rounds in the tank, i'm just treating the whole tank.

Any advice/critique would be appreciated. I've been scouring message boards for weeks checking what i'm doing and i can't see i have many options left. What are the chances the jungle parasite med will work? Any ideas on where this could have come from? I'm assuming hexamita based on the symptoms unless theres any other ideas.

As i said, any help would be massively appreciated!


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## keith.burgoyne (Nov 12, 2009)

The problem is certainly internal; it sounds like you might have hexamita.

A brief write up on hexamita can be found here:
http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/disease/hexamita.php

I'm going to go with the notion that your fish do have hexamita, because your symptoms seem to fit. With that being the case, your fish would have certainly begun to improve with Octozin, given that it's an anti parasitic medication. Metronidazole is an antibiotic, so other than ward off secondary infection, it won't do much to cure hex.

Apparently, hex lives naturally in a fish's digestive system and is kept at bay by the fish's immune system. Once the immune system becomes depressed, often by stress or poor water conditions, the hex population can explode and cause numerous digestive issues; it has also apparently been linked to hole-in-the-head disease.

My Jack Dempsey had the same symptoms, so I've spent a lot of time reading up on hex (special thanks to kmuda for help). I treated him with API General Cure and that seemed to sort out any internal issue he had. He's back eating like a pig again. It took two rounds of GC to sort him out (4 doses). I'd recommend you try API General Cure because I've had success with it. It contains Metronidazole, and Praziquantel (an anti-parasitic medication).

To kill hex, I removed the carbon from my tank and followed the instructions on the General Cure box. He still wasn't eating properly (spitting, etc.), so I waited a week, then repeated the directions on the box. If you choose to follow this advice, I'd do a substantial water change (50% or so), then run the filter with some activated carbon to get the old meds out before adding GC to your water.

I'm not sure, but your tank may have been a bit over crowded, causing stress on your fish. Fish like their space, and if they don't get it, they start stressing. In my 55 gallon tank, for instance, I only keep my Jack, an mbuna, and two corydoras. That might have led toward the eventual spike in hex population.

Sounds like you were on the right track; I'm suggesting this route, however, simply because it has worked for me, and the convenience of pre-measured packets is very handy. Good luck!


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## robh2919 (Aug 13, 2010)

Hi. Thanks for the reply, appreciate it. They're all still alive, not getting any worse or better which i suppose is a plus. I took them off meds for a week to give them a bit of a rest but now they are currently on a course of Ehsa Hexamita, which is about the only treatment left available to me in the UK. Doesn't contain prazi or metro though. 
I've ordered some of the API General Cure you mentioned. Looks like the Jungle Labs stuff may arrive early next week so i'll try a course of that first whilst i wait for the GC, i believe one of the ones i ordered (i ordered a bunch to cover myself) contains both Metro and Prazi as you mentioned the GC does so i'll start with that in the meantime. 
Thanks again, hopefully it'll all go well


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