Advice on gill infection       2/19/20
Hello WWM,
<Hello Amy,>
I rescued a 20g aquarium of fish from a man who was relocating and intended to flush them. Three quarter size Angelfish and a dwarf Gourami. I will include photos. The white Angel would not eat and never left the bubbles under the filter. He had significant red throughout the gills, under them and to the front of the gills. Also behind the eye. This all looked like blood to me, his respiration was frantic and he could not close his operculum. Both sides.
<Understood. Could be Gill Flukes, as you suggest below, but might just as easily be genetic (bear in mind these fish are small enough you can see the blood flow to the gills, and the gill filaments should be deep red anyway) or else some sort of bacterial infection (Angels are somewhat prone to septicaemia, for example). Velvet is another possibility, being very much associated with the gills, even if the rest of the fish seems unaffected, at least early on in the infection.>
My best guess was gill flukes and I treated 6 days with Prazi Pro. We were 2 days into the treatment with some improvement before I thought to take photos of him. The first photo was taken at this time, the red had lessened and the area was a bit smaller. I finished 6 days of Prazi and took the second picture.
<Right.>
Day 2 of Prazi Pro
Now on day 7, having just finished Prazi treatment, he is significantly better on inspection.
<Would seem to be, yes.>
The gills close now, he finally started coming out to eat on day 5 and his appetite is better yet today. Not normal, just slight improvement each day. My concern is that his behavior is still not yet normal. He is out and about the tank maybe 50% of the time but returns frequently to the filter bubbles, nose up to the surface. He eats, but is slow and not enthusiastic yet as he should be. Respiration does seem more normal now.
<Angels are often (usually?) not sociable when kept in twos and threes.
They can be extremely aggressive towards each other, in fact. So I you have 2-3 Angels, and one of them is acting shy and withdrawn, he could very easily be the weakest male in the group, and consequently at the bottom of the pecking order.>
My question is if I should just give him clean water and time to see if he continues to improve or should I assume that if he had flukes, he may also have lingering infection in the gills. Should I dose the tank with
antibiotic?
<Dosing cichlids with Metronidazole and a Furan antibiotic is a common approach with cichlids that rarely causes problems. It treats a good range of possible pathogens, including Hexamita. Indeed, the combo is close to being 'standard operating procedure' for many cichlid-keepers, especially those handling wild-caught or expensive specimens.>
I have Furan 2, Kanaplex, Triple Sulfa. Is one of these antibiotics better than another for gill infection?
Thank you for your help! I sure want this beautiful little guy to make it.
Sincerely, Amy Larson
<Good luck, Neale.>

Re: advice on gill infection       2/19/20
Thank you Neale, I hope you never tire of helping us!
<You are most welcome.>
Just one question, do I give the full recommended dose of both Furan 2 and Metronidazole at the same time? Amy
<I would; neither should be particularly risky for the fish, but do increase aeration if possible, and do also use a nitrite or ammonia test kit during usage to ensure the filter is happy. If in doubt, add some zeolite to the filter to remove ammonia directly, as you'd do with a hospital tank. Cheers, Neale.>

Re: advice on gill infection      3/2/20
Neale, Thank you for the help with the gill problem with my recently rescued Angel fish. He is now doing great, eating well, happy gills. But I now have another problem in this rescued tank. I think these are Camallanus worms? (A different Angel in the same tank.)
<Video won't play for me <<Nor I>>, for some reason. But if red, thread-like fibres emerging from the vent, then yep, Camallanus.>
The tank had a full treatment of Praziquantel followed by Metronidazole and Furan for the gill infection. Today I noticed these worms in a different fish, same tank (see photo) he is not eating. If these are Camallanus, should I treat again with Prazi today or wait until the Fenbendazole arrives on Tuesday?
<Prazi Pro isn't especially effective, so running a second course on the same fish isn't unexpected. If the fish is otherwise healthy, and you think holding out for the Fenbendazole is a safe choice, then sure, hold fire.>
Thank you once again for the time you gift to us. Amy
<Thanks for these kind words. Neale.>
Also...
Would Epsom baths help him?
<Marginally. Epsom Salt helps with constipation, but won't really have much impact on worms. Cheers, Neale.>

Sick angelfish. Old age?     1/30/20
Hi Crew.
<Hello Rhiannon,>
Back again seeking advice for the first time in many years. This afternoon my freshwater angel has started looking real bad. I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do but wanted to reach out.
<Understood.>
He’s a zebra angel, I think at least 9 years old.
<That is a very fair age of Angels. For sure the odd specimens makes it to maybe 10 or even 12 years, but the vast majority do not, even under good circumstances. Bear in mind that specimens on sale in pet shops will be a good six months old, so add that to however many years you've kept your fish.>
He lived through a lot of my beginner mistakes (which you guys helped me through!) so internally I’m sure not the healthiest fish. But for the last 6 or so years has lived happily in a stable, healthy tank. A few hours ago he started gulping at the top of the tank and seems to be going downhill. He’s swimming very slowly, seems to be struggling. Normally when I go to the tank he swims over for food, always the first one over, but he’s not even acknowledging my presence. I did feed them already today, but a full tummy has never stopped him from begging for more before.
<Understood.>
The tank background: 200L tank cycled many many years ago. I did a water change yesterday but tested the water just now anyway: ammonia 0, nitrites 0, nitrates <5.0ppm, pH 6.4 (unchanged). Temp 29C. It’s a medium density planted tank with CO2 injection and ferts.
<All sounds fine. Is this what he's usually been kept in? Temperature is towards the higher end of the range for farmed Angelfish, but nothing outside their tolerance. Water changes to freshen things up are always worth doing, sometimes with slightly cooler water, to see what happens.>
The only major changes to the tank recently were the addition of 4 juvenile discus 3-4 months ago, and 2 months ago I started injecting CO2. Tank was transitioned to planted 1-2 years ago and I was doing liquid carbon until now. Before CO2 injection the tank pH was around 6.7, its gradually shifted to 6.4 over the two months as I increased the CO2 from 1 bubble every 2 seconds to 2 bubbles a second now.
<A low pH should not, in itself, cause problems for Angels, which are well adapted to soft, slightly acidic water conditions. Provided the change has been gradual, I can't see this being a problem to your fish.>
Other tankmates are 4 Kuhli loaches, 9 rummynose tetras and 1 Bristlenose Pleco. I’ve not seen any signs of stress or sickness in the angel before today.
<Good.>
So my question is am I missing something? And if it’s old age, how do you know?
<I do think old age. There are some pathogens that Discus and Angels can share, but usually it's the Discus that suffer, not the Angels, which seem to be the carriers. This is one reason why mixing Discus and farmed Angels is widely frowned upon. Again, while Angels will often bully Discus, that's not what we're seeing here.>
My reason for extra concern (aside from my emotional attachment) is that over the last 6 or so months I’ve lost 5 rummys. I had 5 rummys who were about 5 years old, and around a year ago I bought 9 more to give them a bigger school again. Over that time the school has slowly shrunk to 9. It seems to be mostly the larger ones who have died so I think it’s the older ones, but it’s hard to tell.
<When you say 'lost' did they sicken and die, or just vanish? Angels can and will consume bite-size tetras. Adults are perfectly capable of eating things up to the size of adult Neons. On the other hand, if you're losing the odd fish every couple of weeks, then a deeper problem may be involved. Dosing with CO2 should be safe, but there are a couple of risks. One is displacing oxygen from the water, which is a pernicious problem because we often tone down water movement to stop the CO2 from escaping. In an overstocked tank, or one with too little water/air mixing, the CO2 can displace so much oxygen that the fish suffer. Cichlids are unable to breathe air, for the most part, so are often the first fish to show signs of distress compared with those fish that can use their swim bladders or whatever to breathe air when they must (such as catfish).>
So perhaps I’m losing fish to the march of time, but I’m worried now that it’s something I’m missing.
Thank you for your time.
Rhiannon
<Hope this helps, Neale.>
Re: Sick angelfish. Old age? (RMF -- any other ideas?)<<Nada mas>>     1/30/20
Hi Neale.
<Rhiannon,>
Thank you kindly for your response. As perhaps expected he deteriorated quickly and passed away overnight.
<Oh dear.>
Very sad about it. Though your response about it being pretty old for an angel gives me comfort.
<Glad to hear that.>
As to the temperature of the tank, I used to have it at 26C, but brought it up slowly over time in preparation for adding the discus. There’s been no aggression from the angel towards the discus, which was a relief. This is my first time keeping discus and I was worried the angel might bring an end to that. Instead he seemed to enjoy their company, would often hang out wherever the discus were, almost seemed to be schooling with them.
<Indeed, theoretically they're pretty similar (and closely related) fish with many of the same preferences. In practice though it is hit-and-miss, and most Discus experts recommend against mixing them. To some extent it likely depends on the size of the group.>
There was, however, a lot of conspecific aggression amongst the discus at first. Not what I expected after hearing how shy and peaceful they are!
<Only up to a point. Both Angels and Discus are pair-forming fish that become territorial when spawning, which under aquarium conditions tends to be 'all the time'. On top of that, juveniles and non-breeding adults form loose groups with a distinct hierarchy, and you really do need at least 6 specimens to avoid bullying.>
But it calmed down after the first few weeks as they sorted out who was boss and all has been calm since then. I should mention that when I first got the discus I did lose one. I bought 3 and then 2 more 2 weeks later cause I was worried about an ammonia spike from adding too many too quickly. But in that first 3, one of them got bullied by another and was quite stressed. Often hiding and not eating. When I added the next two and the aggression was dispersed he started to come good.
<Precisely so.>
But a week or so later after a water change I forgot to plug the heater back in, and overnight the temp dropped to 24C. The other discus were fine, but he looked bad. I did water changes throughout the day to bring the temp back up, but he soon died. I figured that was because he wasn’t a healthy enough fish to survive the drop in temp, but it’s worth mentioning now as part of the bigger picture in case I’m wrong.
<I would agree; Discus aren't going to be killed by a few hours at 24C, but if a given specimen is weakened already, sure, it could well have made things a lot worse.>
This was before I started injecting CO2, for context.
<Understood.>
I was worried about the oxygen content of the water when the angel was gulping, because of the reasons you mentioned. I’ve attached a pic from just now to give you an idea of the amount of plants in the tank.
<The plants look nice, but not enough to be producing useful amounts of oxygen for the fish. After a few more months I bet this tank would look great, mind you! Very stylish use of wood and moss.>
When the angel got sick I turned off the CO2 and moved the spray bar up to create surface agitation in case that made a difference. The tank has been running at this amount of CO2 for about 3 -4 weeks, so I figured I would have seen signs of stress before now if it were a problem?
<Possibly, but bear in mind that the 'crunch point' will be at night when the plants are net oxygen absorbers (during the day they'll be releasing more O2 than they use up for respiration). So unless you're watching the tank at midnight, you could easily miss out on the problem.>
The lights and CO2 are on a timer, CO2 goes off an hour before the lights do. The drop checker is usually that mid-green colour, which the table suggests for soft water is normal-insufficient. I’ve seen aquascapers say they push the CO2 till the drop checker is in the yellow and back it off when they see signs of stress in the fish. I’m not at all interested in pushing limits like that, keeping my fish healthy is more important to me than the state of the plants.
<A lot of hardcore aquarium plant growers tend to choose small fish like tetras and barbs with very small oxygen demands. Cichlids are substantially more sensitive, so this 'push things to the limit' approach doesn't appeal to me. I'd tend to go with using CO2 at the lowest setting at first, leave for a few weeks, and if all is going well, nudge it up a bit. Light intensity is usually the main factor in plant growth rate, with CO2 being an extra bonus. If your plants are looking 'leggy' or whatever, it's more likely lighting is what's holding them back.>
But that said is the drop checker enough of a guide to know there’s also enough oxygen in the tank? Can I be confident that that amount of plants (which I intend to keep adding to) is producing enough oxygen for my fish? I feel like I’m doing the right things, but would love to know if I’m missing something in ignorance.
<See above.>
As to the rummys, the first one that died I did see. The Kuhli loaches were making a quick snack of it in the bottom of the tank. The others I haven’t seen. I don’t think they’re being eaten only because they’ve lived with that angel the whole time and it never tried to eat them that I saw, and if it was that I figured I would expect the smaller new ones to go first?
<I suppose, or else the stupidest?>
Because of all the stem plants on the left near the filter intake it would be easy to miss it if one died and was being eaten but the Kuhlis. But it’s also enough stock losses over the months to have me nervous that there’s something bigger here. I don’t see signs of disease but I’ve also never really dealt with disease in my tanks so I’d be pretty ignorant about the signs.
<Oftentimes we can't be 100% sure about fish deaths. For sure Whitespot is obvious, or Finrot on a fish that's been fighting. But more often we're trying to puzzle out what's happened, which means ruling out complicating factors, such as CO2, wherever possible.>
As an aside, I doubt you’d remember (and I don’t remember if it was you or Bob who responded at the time), but some 7ish years ago I wrote to you guys about this angel. He jumped out of my tank and I found him in the mouth of my dog, alive and hurt. You guys talked me through treating his wounds. He not only survived being bitten by my dog, but lived this long. We always thought of him as our little miracle fish, and I often thought of the help I received here. Thanks for doing what you do. Your advice is forever invaluable.
<Thanks for the kind words! Quite the story...>
- Rhiannon
<Best wishes, Neale.>