Fairy Wrasse Not Looking Too Good After Freshwater Dip and Confirmed Flukes

[Tnops]

Hello, after over a week of having it, today I’ve noticed my fairy wrasse suddenly laying in the corner and not eating. It was eating and swimming the day before. I got him out and did a freshwater dip for 5 minutes which confirmed a bad case of flukes. It was not moving at all in the dip but I still tried to hold it up right. When I returned it back into the tank, it was swimming up to the surface and gulping lots of air, looking like it was trying to jump. It is now sitting on the bottom with gills moving. Is there anything else I can do for it before treating it with prazi tomorrow after another dip?

I turned off the power head and added air tubing into the tank for oxygen.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Hello, after over a week of having it, today I’ve noticed my fairy wrasse suddenly laying in the corner and not eating. It was eating and swimming the day before. I got him out and did a freshwater dip for 5 minutes which confirmed a bad case of flukes. It was not moving at all in the dip but I still tried to hold it up right. When I returned it back into the tank, it was swimming up to the surface and gulping lots of air, looking like it was trying to jump. It is now sitting on the bottom with gills moving. Is there anything else I can do for it before treating it with prazi tomorrow after another dip?

I turned off the power head and added air tubing into the tank for oxygen.

Sorry to hear that. If you saw actual flukes in the dip (like little sesame seeds or fish scales) then your wrasse has Neobenedenia. The trouble is, FW dips always carry some risk when used on fish with severe flukes: the flukes act as little corks, when the FW dip knocks them off, that leaves holes in the fish's skin, open to the water, and the fish can bleed out. There isn't anything that can be done, if you leave the flukes in place the fish will die. The only "treatment" is supportive therapy, keeping the fish calm, under good aeration and lowering the salinity a bit to make it similar to their blood (say a specific gravity of 1.020). Of course, you can't do that if there are invertebrates in the tank.

Neobenedenia is REALLY difficult to fully cure using praziquantel. Neo has an egg stage that prazi doesn't kill. You need to space the treatments apart; three times, 8 days apart for example. Personally, I've gone to using hyposalinity for 35 days (1.012).

Jay Hemdal