Brooklynella

[Aries360]

Hello everyone and good day, my 500 gallon display tank has Brooklynella. It’s mainly FOWLR. But same plumbing system is my 120g reef tank (helps soak up nitrates n phosphate) years ago I nuked my display with copper (it was that or loose thousands in fish from velvet) and I’m trying to avoid that. Been there done that. And it grew coral back no problem after 3 months. Anyway it’s brook this time which must of come with some water change or new coral cause I haven’t added any new fish in a very very long time and I quarantine all
Fish now. SO . Question. What can I do: I started feeding fishotel trio pellets only (fish don’t really like the taste). Also started peroxide dosing in the tank and for extra support I dissolve a 500mg metronidazole tablet into the water column three times a day for both: I have one uv sterilizer but I ordered another one to hang on the back temporarily with its own pump. Anyone have an extra ideas. And no you can’t catch any fish unless it’s about dead. Only fish I caught so far that survived is my clown trigger and he’s in copper quarantine and doing great. So any extra ideas? Fish lost so far is adult emporer one anthia one purple royal garama one high hate and unfortunately my Achilles.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Hello everyone and good day, my 500 gallon display tank has Brooklynella. It’s mainly FOWLR. But same plumbing system is my 120g reef tank (helps soak up nitrates n phosphate) years ago I nuked my display with copper (it was that or loose thousands in fish from velvet) and I’m trying to avoid that. Been there done that. And it grew coral back no problem after 3 months. Anyway it’s brook this time which must of come with some water change or new coral cause I haven’t added any new fish in a very very long time and I quarantine all
Fish now. SO . Question. What can I do: I started feeding fishotel trio pellets only (fish don’t really like the taste). Also started peroxide dosing in the tank and for extra support I dissolve a 500mg metronidazole tablet into the water column three times a day for both: I have one uv sterilizer but I ordered another one to hang on the back temporarily with its own pump. Anyone have an extra ideas. And no you can’t catch any fish unless it’s about dead. Only fish I caught so far that survived is my clown trigger and he’s in copper quarantine and doing great. So any extra ideas? Fish lost so far is adult emporer one anthia one purple royal garama one high hate and unfortunately my Achilles.

Can you post a clear video of any fish that are showing symptoms? Brooklynella is pretty specific as to the fish it infects (usually clownfish) and it leaves many species unaffected. I wonder if something else is going on here?

Copper rarely works for Brooklynella. Formalin is the best treatment, but that is really not safe to use in a home situation due to human health concerns. I've not had good results with metronidazole, at least not at doses that are safe for corals and invertebrates (same with chloroquine).

Oral meds really don't work for Brooklynella - those live on the skin of the fish, and oral meds just don't get to that region of a fish very well at all.

UV will have zero affect on an active Brook infection, this protozoan can reproduce on the fish itself, it does not have a free swimming stage that would ever enter a UV sterilizer.

Ruby Reef Rally Pro can work against Brook, but it needs to be used in the tank system itself (at the low dose that is safe for inverts) but also used as a 3x daily dip for the affected fish - and given the number of fish that you have, that would be problematic.

 

[W31Olds]

Why do you think you have Brooklynella? If you treated your Clown Trigger with Copper and he is doing well that is a clear sign it's something else as Copper does not treat Brook. Most of the Fish you described as dying are not normally fish that get Brook. As Jay indicated, Videos and Pics will help. Also do you have a microscope? Since you have so many expensive Fish a skin scrape of one that's sick might help determine what's going on.

 

[Aries360]

It’s very hard to tell me the pictures, my Tank always basically lives with ich, never really had luck getting rid of it, even after blasting my copper. Skin scraping actually confirmed the Brooklynella diagnosis. I have videos, but not really way to post it the skin scraping on the microscope. Yeah definitely can’t catch any of them. The 15th I put the trigger in quarantine, the 21st I started the trio pellets only. The skin scraping was an argument, whether it was uronema but no Fish have had any red markings ever, and last time I dealt with velvet which is kind of what this looks like on the skin, but half of my tank was gone in less than a week, we’re already over a week now and only lost a couple fish

 

[Aries360]

I agree that Brooklynella seems unlikely but the skin scraping I have videos and I tried posting a picture of it, it doesn’t look anything like ich or a velvet on the microscope, yes, I have a microscope. Currently none of the fish may display are sickly enough to catch or showing signs of lots of spots other than the few ich spots.

 

[Aries360]

Hard to get a moving picture, but every now and then for years my fish I’ve had these spots on them that come and go, which I assume was ich which is basically under control, but It all started with the Achilles Tang progressively getting more and more and more ich spots he was never able to rid it no matter what I did. Then it died, and everything started spiraling down. Maybe it’s regularly possible that he just was riddled with so much that when he died, he let it into the system? And the skin scraping is a misdiagnosis.

 

[Aries360]

This guy probably is next looks the worst

 

[W31Olds]

Looking a the Pajama Cardinal, I would suspect you may have Flukes. Have you observed any Scratching or Flashing? I see Cloudy eyes on the Emperor and the Cardinal. Have any of your Clowns died or shown any symptoms? I see at least one in your Tank.

 

[winxp_man]

Some of the pics as the one with the trigger looks like mucus cones and ich. So does the rabbit fish in the next post. You have a way to crank up bright white lights?

 

[Aries360]

Looking a the Pajama Cardinal, I would suspect you may have Flukes. Have you observed any Scratching or Flashing? I see Cloudy eyes on the Emperor and the Cardinal. Have any of your Clowns died or shown any symptoms? I see at least one in your Tank.

No clowns died.

Looking a the Pajama Cardinal, I would suspect you may have Flukes. Have you observed any Scratching or Flashing? I see Cloudy eyes on the Emperor and the Cardinal. Have any of your Clowns died or shown any symptoms? I see at least one in your Tank.

 

[Aries360]

Not sure if you can see the video and yes some flashing :

 

[winxp_man]

Have to say this is uronema. Brook tends to have smaller tentacles on one end.

 

[Aries360]

With no red marks on any fish?

 

[Aries360]

I’m going to treat with prazipro tomorrow cause it’s reef safe so I figured it’s worth a shot

 

[winxp_man]

With no red marks on any fish?

It might be surface only. That is a possibility with Uronema.

 

[Aries360]

It might be surface only. That is a possibility with Uronema.

A couple fish died already: but dealing with this before the 16th so I think if it was velvet most would be dead already. Can flukes get this bad to kill off fish? I have a cleaner wrasse. It’s also possible I misdiagnosed my skin scraping for brook but maybe was flukes that someone recommended

 

[Aries360]

Some of the pics as the one with the trigger looks like mucus cones and ich. So does the rabbit fish in the next post. You have a way to crank up bright white lights?

Not really without being a pain and changing my settings in my knock off lights lol

 

[winxp_man]

Not really without being a pain and changing my settings in my knock off lights lol

I would get a cheap white light you can hang up temporary.

A couple fish died already: but dealing with this before the 16th so I think if it was velvet most would be dead already. Can flukes get this bad to kill off fish? I have a cleaner wrasse. It’s also possible I misdiagnosed my skin scraping for brook but maybe was flukes that someone recommended

Yes flukes can eventually kill fish. And it takes time. When the infestation gets to a level that a fish can’t get oxygen any longer.

Flukes a fish will have fins tucked in, hide more, scratching or swipe at things with its gill plate, yawn, they can also make a fish stop eating, increased breathing rate, red gills.

Sadly some of these signs are also part of many other diseases. Ich being the easiest with the visual of white spots. Here is a twist. Blue lights hide ich very well. Can’t count how many tanks of friends or LFS’s I have seen with blue lights and fish were loaded with ich. The blue light does not let you spot ich every easy. One way I found possible is kneeling down on one knee and looking upward at the fish to see if you can spot the ich cones.

Also if you have an orange filter maybe you can take some pics of vids and see how that turns out visually vs just blue light unfiltered pics.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

No clowns died.

This does look like Brooklnella. Uronema moves faster and ich is rounder. However, I’d expect to see hundreds of these per microscope view in active infections. Also, the gross visual symptoms don’t match up, and then, why are the clownfish not affected.

 

[Aries360]

Maybe I miss diagnosed it with the flat worms on the scope. this was already after the fish died in the copper bath so I pulled it out into the skin scraping in tons of spots, and these are the only parasites I could find. The stores aren’t open, but I pulled the trigger out of the copper bath and I did a one minute freshwater dip, he’s very weak so I didn’t wanna do too much. So now he’s back in regular water with no copper, it looks like eggs are falling off of him.