Dead Anthia in QT. Nitrite?

[TeeJay87]

I lost a sunset anthia this morning in QT. It was with 3 other sunset anthias, 1 princess anthia, and a YWG. I’m 5 months into the hobby doing my 1st quarantine.

I added fish to this QT about 6 weeks ago on March 22 to a tank that had been cycling for nearly a month. 4 days ago I did ~80% water change, thoroughly rinsed a heavily soiled sponge and wiped off film from the inside of the glass. I then did a standard initial dose of prazipro.

Water tests from API this morning showed: 0 ammonia, 5ppm nitrates, nearly 0 phosphate; however nitrites were atleast 1.5 ppm or so, maybe much higher. Picture of nitrite test, deceased anthia, and tank after water change. Ammonia has also been clearly 0 per seachem ammonia alert for weeks.

I’m trying to determine: 1) what caused my nitrite spike? Tap water rinsing 1 of 4 sponges/media bags + wiping film off inside of glass during water change or possibly an interaction with prazipro? 2) what killed the sunset anthia? My best guesses are nitrite poisoning or nitrite stress induced Uronema? The only reason I suspect Uronema could be at play is bc there is some red near the rear of the fish and I lost another sunset anthia about a week in due to what seems to have been Uronema. EDIT: The sunsets somewhat regularly assert their dominance and bite eachother; this typically results in a large red spot on the fish and I don’t know how to tell the difference between this and uronema.

I assumed my nitrite couldn’t spike once the cycle completed and ammonia was stable at 0, so I have not been tracking nitrite. Could someone with more experience please help me understand what happened and what I did wrong?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Looks like a lyretail anthias and a genus that usually squabble with each other. Any chasing or aggression you know of.
It is hard to assess a deceased fish without sure signs
Nitrite has little significance in saltwater opposed to freshwater unless sky high
If Ammonia elevated in quarantine, may pose an oxygen issue in which I generally advise to increase aeration during quarantine and treatment using air stone
Unfortunately, I trust a politician more than I do api test kits and would suggest taking a good size water sample to a trusted LFS that does not use API test kits and see what readings they come up with for ammonia-nitrate and ph and to compare with yours

 

[TeeJay87]

Looks like a lyretail anthias and a genus that usually squabble with each other. Any chasing or aggression you know of.
It is hard to assess a deceased fish without sure signs
Nitrite has little significance in saltwater opposed to freshwater unless sky high
If Ammonia elevated in quarantine, may pose an oxygen issue in which I generally advise to increase aeration during quarantine and treatment using air stone
Unfortunately, I trust a politician more than I do api test kits and would suggest taking a good size water sample to a trusted LFS that does not use API test kits and see what readings they come up with for ammonia-nitrate and ph and to compare with yours

Thanks for the tips and quick response!

They are sunset anthias (parvirostris); agree they look a bit like lyretails but these only get to 3 inches. Yes there is intermittent aggression, but I wouldn’t describe it as chasing or cornering. Mostly they live and let the others be, but I do think hierarchies are occasionally challenged and there is a face off often ending with a bite on one or both fish. The most dominant sunset anthia (left side of tank) was separated for this reason.

I’m confident that ammonia is 0 bc I’m also using seachem’ s ammonia alert, and I’ve seen what it looks like when both seachem and API ammonia test kits have slight ammonia and they are bot clearly 0.

Also for oxygen, I added the air sponge filter when I dosed the prazipro. There are also two filters and a power head aimed at the surface to agitate the water, so I can’t imagine this is an oxygen issue.

Nitrite has always tested at 0 for my DT, which was started with TBS live rock and sand. So I know there is elevated nitrite, but I’m not sure how high it is because the colors are hard to make sense of.

 

[TeeJay87]

I did a ~75% water change and tested nitrites again. Looks to me like it’s atleast 1.0ppm, which means it was atleast 4.0ppm before the water change. At what ppm does nitrite begin to negatively affect saltwater fish?

 

[MnFish1]

As @vetteguy53081 said - Nitrite is considered by most people to be less of an issue in saltwater tanks. Having said that:

1. Was your seachem alert always reading 0 ammonia?
2. I do not find API test kits to be unreliable - if they are done correctly - and read correctly.
3. If you ever have a test that seems 'out of line' - the best thing is to doublecheck it with another method
4. It could be that you had a brief ammonia spike - that you missed on your seachem alert - but which caused problems for fhe fish (though - I would think if that were true - all of the fish would have b been affected. Then this would be the cause of your elevated nitrite.
5. Not sure what you mean about what you did with the sponge - but did that remove a fair bit of your biological filter perhaps? It sounds like you only cleaned 1/4 - which makes this likely.
6. The 80% water change - why was that done? Was there a problem?
7. How was the fish behaving, eating, etc - i.e. were there any changes before the death.

Last - you did not mention copper - were you just doing an observation quarantine? or did you use copper. Its nearly impossible to see 'disease' in a dead fish. If you did not use copper - I would consider another parasite that may be a danger to your other fish.

Its always difficult when fish die - so sorry about that. Welcome to the site - and hope this helps. PS. I don't see anything that looks like uronema - but again that can be difficult.

 

[MnFish1]

I did a ~75% water change and tested nitrites again. Looks to me like it’s atleast 1.0ppm, which means it was atleast 4.0ppm before the water change. At what ppm does nitrite begin to negatively affect saltwater fish?

From the article below:

" Tests in marine species, however, showed the toxicity to be much lower. None of the thirteen marine fish species for which I could find nitrite toxicity data had LC50 values below 100 ppm, and half had LC50 values of 1,000 - 3,000 ppm or more."

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-06/rhf/index.php

 

[vetteguy53081]

I did a ~75% water change and tested nitrites again. Looks to me like it’s atleast 1.0ppm, which means it was atleast 4.0ppm before the water change. At what ppm does nitrite begin to negatively affect saltwater fish?

At 2 or higher and the badge is a freshwater/saltwater product and rarely accurate also .
I sold them at my store and quickly pulled them for a reason
That’s why I suggest having water rechecked
There’s been a whole array of persons on here who I suggested to do the same and they were shocked at how high their levels really were opposed to their test readings
I on a personal level will not trust a $22 master test kit to risk a couple hundred dollars worth of fish, in my case a few thousand dollars of fish

 

[MnFish1]

At .5 or higher and the badge is a freshwater/saltwater product and rarely accurate also .
I sold them at my store and quickly pulled them for a reason
That’s why I suggest having water rechecked
There’s been a whole array of persons on here who I suggested to do the same and they were shocked at how high their levels really were opposed to their test readings
I on a personal level will not trust a $22 master test kit to risk a couple hundred dollars worth of fish, in my case a few thousand dollars of fish

But - the bottom line - in this case - is that - nitrite of 4 or 2 ppm will not cause a problem. So - the fish must have died of something else.

 

[vetteguy53081]

But - the bottom line - in this case - is that - nitrite of 4 or 2 ppm will not cause a problem. So - the fish must have died of something else.

I’m not concerned with nitrite as described. Mouth open is a spike or loss of saturated oxygen

 

[MnFish1]

@TeeJay87 - I don't want this to come across as being critical - but since it is your first quarantine - here are a couple of thoughts:

1. If you could post exactly what your protocol is/was - what medications were added, the levels, duration, etc (if any), etc.
2. Fish in QT are stressed - in general - looking at your picture - your tank looks very brightly lit, and that may increase the stress level somewhat.
3. Water changes are fine - 75 and 80 percent water changes without a good reason - could also be leading to problems salt mixed properly, parameters, temp, etc matched. Many salts have very specific requirements for mixing. if not followed, deaths can result. And the parameter changes can add to stress levels, less resistance to disease, etc.
4. The dosing of certain medications can be tricky - and some can be toxic. I would also double check that.

Hope this helps - and again - sorry about your problems

 

[TeeJay87]

As @vetteguy53081 said - Nitrite is considered by most people to be less of an issue in saltwater tanks. Having said that:

1. Was your seachem alert always reading 0 ammonia?
2. I do not find API test kits to be unreliable - if they are done correctly - and read correctly.
3. If you ever have a test that seems 'out of line' - the best thing is to doublecheck it with another method
4. It could be that you had a brief ammonia spike - that you missed on your seachem alert - but which caused problems for fhe fish (though - I would think if that were true - all of the fish would have b been affected. Then this would be the cause of your elevated nitrite.
5. Not sure what you mean about what you did with the sponge - but did that remove a fair bit of your biological filter perhaps? It sounds like you only cleaned 1/4 - which makes this likely.
6. The 80% water change - why was that done? Was there a problem?
7. How was the fish behaving, eating, etc - i.e. were there any changes before the death.

Last - you did not mention copper - were you just doing an observation quarantine? or did you use copper. Its nearly impossible to see 'disease' in a dead fish. If you did not use copper - I would consider another parasite that may be a danger to your other fish.

Its always difficult when fish die - so sorry about that. Welcome to the site - and hope this helps. PS. I don't see anything that looks like uronema - but again that can be difficult.

Thanks for your response! I’ll start with #6 (why the 80% wc?): I did the water change just because I was about to dose the prazipro and knowing that anthias can be sensitive, I wanted to make sure the water quality was about as best as it could be. Throughout this entire quarantine, I have had on and off issues with cloudy water. It’s hard for me to know how normal this is and what are the non-alarming causes of this as it’s my first go at quarantining. Early on, I think I had a bacterial bloom, then that seemed to clear up. At one point, I dosed API’s fin and body cure (doxycylcine hyclate) because I was worried about infection and that seemed to turn the cloudy on top of turning the water pink. I fed with garlic a couple times and thawed frozen food and that seemed to cloud the water. I also suspect it could just be excess decaying poop and food.

1. In the first two weeks or so after adding fish, I would see the seachem alert show alert level 0.05ppm. I was doing more frequent water changes then every 2-3 days to keep it low. Then at some point, it just stayed at bright yellow 0 and I assumed the cycle caught up to the new fish/food.

5. I took the sponge out of the larger filter (aquaclear 50) and rinsed it under cold tap water. Typically, when I do a water change, I have not been cleaning the filter sponges and media, I guess bc I have been scared to lose nitrifying bacteria. I assumed that in quarantine, I am doing water changes frequently enough that nitrates will not build up to any worrying level. However, I am now wondering if that is causing poor water quality in general and perhaps that what has also mainly contributed to clouding water. What is the correct thing to do here when it comes to cleaning the filter media? Every couple of days, should I put some of the tank water into a container and rinse the filter sponges and bio media bags in that container?

7. Behavior seemed pretty normal. Everyone seems to eat and I feed atleast 4, usually 5 times a day.

I started and planned on an observational quarantine based on a 2016 MACNA talk. After losing the first fish and consulting here, I was convinced to do something closer to the standard quarantine sticky here. I tried cupramine, but one anthia stopped eating so I took started taking the copper out after 2 days. I then decided that I will just try to dose 1x of prazi and after 7 days, do 48 hours of cupramine and add to display tank.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I did a ~75% water change and tested nitrites again. Looks to me like it’s atleast 1.0ppm, which means it was atleast 4.0ppm before the water change. At what ppm does nitrite begin to negatively affect saltwater fish?

Nitrite is completely non-toxic to marine fish at any amount that you will ever see in an aquarium. It is, however, deadly to freshwater fish, thus the confusion. As it turns out, sodium chloride competes with the nitrite and renders it non-toxic. Aquariums artificially spiked with upwards of 100 mg/l nitrite can show some fish toxicity.

Ammonia, at a high pH is of course a real killer.

That said, the open mouth and the tail lesion on that dead Anthias really point to internal Uronema as being the cause. There isn't any effective treatment for this, but luckily, it is also not super contagious. Other Anthias in your group may be carrying it however. We see about 90% of the cases in newly acquired Green Chromis yellow coris wrasse and Anthias, with a smattering of other species mixed in (usually butterflyfish).

Here is an article I wrote up on Uronema:

Uronema / Red Band Disease - Hemdal

Red Band Syndrome in Marine Fishes: Caused by the Protozoan; Uronema sp. Jay Hemdal Introduction: This moderately common disease of certain species of marine fish is so often misdiagnosed that most aquarists apply incorrect treatment methods...

www.reef2reef.com

Jay

 

[Chrisv.]

In case nobody has said it, nitrite interferes with most nitrate test kits causing a false positive.

 

[TeeJay87]

Nitrite is completely non-toxic to marine fish at any amount that you will ever see in an aquarium. It is, however, deadly to freshwater fish, thus the confusion. As it turns out, sodium chloride competes with the nitrite and renders it non-toxic. Aquariums artificially spiked with upwards of 100 mg/l nitrite can show some fish toxicity.

Ammonia, at a high pH is of course a real killer.

That said, the open mouth and the tail lesion on that dead Anthias really point to internal Uronema as being the cause. There isn't any effective treatment for this, but luckily, it is also not super contagious. Other Anthias in your group may be carrying it however. We see about 90% of the cases in newly acquired Green Chromis yellow coris wrasse and Anthias, with a smattering of other species mixed in (usually butterflyfish).

Here is an article I wrote up on Uronema:

Uronema / Red Band Disease - Hemdal

Red Band Syndrome in Marine Fishes: Caused by the Protozoan; Uronema sp. Jay Hemdal Introduction: This moderately common disease of certain species of marine fish is so often misdiagnosed that most aquarists apply incorrect treatment methods...

www.reef2reef.com

Jay

Thanks. After my initial posts, I did realize that since you can see the red lesion to an equal degree on both left and right images of the fish, that it does point to something internal. Also I dont see the scale damage that should be there if it was a bite from an aggressor.

 

[MnFish1]

Thanks for your response! I’ll start with #6 (why the 80% wc?): I did the water change just because I was about to dose the prazipro and knowing that anthias can be sensitive, I wanted to make sure the water quality was about as best as it could be. Throughout this entire quarantine, I have had on and off issues with cloudy water. It’s hard for me to know how normal this is and what are the non-alarming causes of this as it’s my first go at quarantining. Early on, I think I had a bacterial bloom, then that seemed to clear up. At one point, I dosed API’s fin and body cure (doxycylcine hyclate) because I was worried about infection and that seemed to turn the cloudy on top of turning the water pink. I fed with garlic a couple times and thawed frozen food and that seemed to cloud the water. I also suspect it could just be excess decaying poop and food.

1. In the first two weeks or so after adding fish, I would see the seachem alert show alert level 0.05ppm. I was doing more frequent water changes then every 2-3 days to keep it low. Then at some point, it just stayed at bright yellow 0 and I assumed the cycle caught up to the new fish/food.

5. I took the sponge out of the larger filter (aquaclear 50) and rinsed it under cold tap water. Typically, when I do a water change, I have not been cleaning the filter sponges and media, I guess bc I have been scared to lose nitrifying bacteria. I assumed that in quarantine, I am doing water changes frequently enough that nitrates will not build up to any worrying level. However, I am now wondering if that is causing poor water quality in general and perhaps that what has also mainly contributed to clouding water. What is the correct thing to do here when it comes to cleaning the filter media? Every couple of days, should I put some of the tank water into a container and rinse the filter sponges and bio media bags in that container?

7. Behavior seemed pretty normal. Everyone seems to eat and I feed atleast 4, usually 5 times a day.

I started and planned on an observational quarantine based on a 2016 MACNA talk. After losing the first fish and consulting here, I was convinced to do something closer to the standard quarantine sticky here. I tried cupramine, but one anthia stopped eating so I took started taking the copper out after 2 days. I then decided that I will just try to dose 1x of prazi and after 7 days, do 48 hours of cupramine and add to display tank.

OK - I might consider the following (since you just changed a bunch of water) - and PS - thanks for all the information:

1. Consider doing a re-boot. I.e. using the protocol sticky above for doing a QT. Dose copper appropriately - for the recommended length of time. Its unclear whether you've given the correct dose of prazipro.
2. The doxycycline CAN indeed affect your nitrifying bacteria - and might be the reason you had some blooms, and ammonia at first.
3. The reason the protocols are written the way they are - is because - its how they work 'properly'. If you do cupramine for 2 days - it will not. I guess my motto is 'do it completely' - or 'don't do it'.

Anyway - again. thanks for all the information. As you can guess its nearly impossible to try to sort out everything thats happened over several weeks. !!

 

[TeeJay87]

@TeeJay87 - I don't want this to come across as being critical - but since it is your first quarantine - here are a couple of thoughts:

1. If you could post exactly what your protocol is/was - what medications were added, the levels, duration, etc (if any), etc.
2. Fish in QT are stressed - in general - looking at your picture - your tank looks very brightly lit, and that may increase the stress level somewhat.
3. Water changes are fine - 75 and 80 percent water changes without a good reason - could also be leading to problems salt mixed properly, parameters, temp, etc matched. Many salts have very specific requirements for mixing. if not followed, deaths can result. And the parameter changes can add to stress levels, less resistance to disease, etc.
4. The dosing of certain medications can be tricky - and some can be toxic. I would also double check that.

Hope this helps - and again - sorry about your problems

Good suggestions and I don’t mean to be as defensive as it probably sounds below. Just responding and providing info.

1. Started with observation only ~ 10 days. Then 2-3 days of copper before removing due to fish not eating. Then back to observational for 2 or 3 weeks; during that time did a fin and body cure application because I was concerned of an infection. Then 1x dose of prazipro 4 days ago. At this point, I plan to add copper for 24-48 hours in a couple of days and going straight to the DT. I am taking a trip for a couple days starting May 13th and want to get them settled into the DT before I leave. It will be easier for my wife to manage the 1 tank.

2. I think I had windows open for that picture as I just finished the water change. The light is not very bright at all imo and is a 5.8watt warm color light (see images below). The deep-water princess anthia does well and is very active and does not appear to be bothered by the light.

3. I have a good handle on temp and salinity control and 24+hour mixing time. I don’t match pH, which I know isn’t ideal, but I assumed wasn’t hurting much. The mixed instant ocean has a pH of ~7.9 to 8.1 and my tank water typically sits around 7.8 - 8.0. I do want to learn and buy the products I need to manipulate pH, but I just haven’t gotten there yet and I’m not growing corals.

4. I’m measuring and dosing liquids by a tiny ml level syringe now (vs counting drops), I’ve measured my tank dimensions so I know the volume, and I have a good grasp on the basic math as I studied accounting. Of course, I’m as prone to mistakes as anyone else and will continue to double check.