Goby Grabbing Air at Surface

[WilkCP216]

My husband and I have had our tank for almost a year now. All of our fish and tank mates we've had for about 9 months.

40G Breeder Long with Live Rock
3 powerheads (2 small, 1 big)
Ammonia- 0ppm
Nitrite- 0ppm
Nitrate- 26.9ppm (we know its high, it's due for a water change tomorrow)
Salinity- 1.026ppm
Tank mates- Black Ocellaris, Diamondback Goby, Six Line Wrasse, 2 peppermint shrimp, a few hermits, and a handful of snails (variety)

We had a bout of ick earlier this year and we lost one fish. Everyone else was quarantined and survived.
About a week or so ago my husband noticed Goby had his mouth wide open and the Six Line was eating/cleaning out the Goby's gills. Everything has seemed fine until tonight when we both noticed Goby swimming to the surface and grabbing a mouth full of air. We saw him do this several times and tried to get a better look and videos.
He would grab air, release a big air bubble, then swim back down and release several more air bubbles and then do it again. At times he would be breathing super fast and then he would go back to his normal breathing. He also would open his mouth really wide when the Six Line was near by.
Both of the other fish seem fine. We also added an airstone tonight to see if it will help. Does anyone have any ideas on what could be happening?

 

[WilkCP216]

Here's the videos we got from tonight.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

My husband and I have had our tank for almost a year now. All of our fish and tank mates we've had for about 9 months.

40G Breeder Long with Live Rock
3 powerheads (2 small, 1 big)
Ammonia- 0ppm
Nitrite- 0ppm
Nitrate- 26.9ppm (we know its high, it's due for a water change tomorrow)
Salinity- 1.026ppm
Tank mates- Black Ocellaris, Diamondback Goby, Six Line Wrasse, 2 peppermint shrimp, a few hermits, and a handful of snails (variety)

We had a bout of ick earlier this year and we lost one fish. Everyone else was quarantined and survived.
About a week or so ago my husband noticed Goby had his mouth wide open and the Six Line was eating/cleaning out the Goby's gills. Everything has seemed fine until tonight when we both noticed Goby swimming to the surface and grabbing a mouth full of air. We saw him do this several times and tried to get a better look and videos.
He would grab air, release a big air bubble, then swim back down and release several more air bubbles and then do it again. At times he would be breathing super fast and then he would go back to his normal breathing. He also would open his mouth really wide when the Six Line was near by.
Both of the other fish seem fine. We also added an airstone tonight to see if it will help. Does anyone have any ideas on what could be happening?

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

The tank looks like it has good oxygenation, so I think you can rule out low dissolved oxygen or high carbon dioxide.

Is the fish still eating ok?
No rapid breathing in the clownfish?

A fish that postures for a cleaner fish (I think sixlines are facultative cleaners) usually has some type of gill parasite. In this case, it doesn't seem to be velvet (Amyloodinium) because only one fish is affected and it doesn't look all that sick (pending your answers above). There are some rare gill diseases, but the only really treatable one is gill flukes. It is pretty unusual to see gill flukes in a fish after 9 months, but it does happen (you usually see it crop up within a couple of months). You can't really diagnose this further, so the common process is to treat for them and see if the symptoms improve. In this case, you would dose with Prazipro twice, about 8 days apart with good aeration running. You would do a 30% water change before the second treatment.

Jay

 

[vetteguy53081]

Agree that the most symptomatic appears to be gill flukes and the videos also show this fish resisting what appears to be very strong water current.

 

[WilkCP216]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

The tank looks like it has good oxygenation, so I think you can rule out low dissolved oxygen or high carbon dioxide.

Is the fish still eating ok?
No rapid breathing in the clownfish?

A fish that postures for a cleaner fish (I think sixlines are facultative cleaners) usually has some type of gill parasite. In this case, it doesn't seem to be velvet (Amyloodinium) because only one fish is affected and it doesn't look all that sick (pending your answers above). There are some rare gill diseases, but the only really treatable one is gill flukes. It is pretty unusual to see gill flukes in a fish after 9 months, but it does happen (you usually see it crop up within a couple of months). You can't really diagnose this further, so the common process is to treat for them and see if the symptoms improve. In this case, you would dose with Prazipro twice, about 8 days apart with good aeration running. You would do a 30% water change before the second treatment.

Jay

Thank you! Can we dose our display tank with Prazipro? Do we need to remove the Goby to treat him separately? Catching him last time was a NIGHTMARE!

 

[WilkCP216]

Agree that the most symptomatic appears to be gill flukes and the videos also show this fish resisting what appears to be very strong water current.

Thank you, he was swimming into the current, we figured possibly trying to clear his gills out. We added a larger powerhead because of how much detritus that builds up on our rocks and tried to aim it more at the front side of the rocks to keep it from settling on our rock scape. You said "resisting very strong water current" is that ok? He's still been eating fine from what we've seen and our clown doesn't have any symptoms or rapid breathing.

Our clown however is very finicky. He tends to stay in the top corner of our tank. When everyone had ick, we also had a orange percula clown and they were fine for months in the DT but at the end of quarantine he was bullying our black one so bad that we thought he would die. We returned the orange clown back to our LFS and nursed our black clown back to health and now he's very shy and reserved.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Yes - you can dose your main tank with Prazipro ...

Jay

 

[C4ctus99]

Found this thread researching my own goby who seems to be surfacing for air. I only just observed it tonight but in the past saw him seeming to flash his gills against the rock or substrate on occasion.

How did it turn out for you goby?

 

[Tired]

Found this thread researching my own goby who seems to be surfacing for air. I only just observed it tonight but in the past saw him seeming to flash his gills against the rock or substrate on occasion.

How did it turn out for you goby?

Flashing and surfacing for air means something is messing with its ability to breathe and is irritating its gills. That could be from several things, and may very well be different from what was wrong with OP's fish. A freshwater dip (https://humble.fish/community/index.php?threads/freshwater-dip.20/) to check for flukes is probably a good idea.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Flashing and surfacing for air means something is messing with its ability to breathe and is irritating its gills. That could be from several things, and may very well be different from what was wrong with OP's fish. A freshwater dip (https://humble.fish/community/index.php?threads/freshwater-dip.20/) to check for flukes is probably a good idea.

Here is our post on FW dips:

Freshwater Dips

“Freshwater dips” (FW Dips) are commonly used to dislodge certain parasites from the skin of marine fishes. This is more of a diagnostic tool, and less of a permanent cure. Dips can be used to lower the parasite load temporarily, while waiting for another treatment to begin. Looking at the...

www.reef2reef.com

People often use FW dips to "check for flukes", but really, only one species (Neobendenia) can be seen directly in the dip with the naked eye, the rest all require a microscope to see.

FW dips can indirectly identify flukes - if the fish symptoms get better after a day or two, that indicates that flukes were knocked off the fish. Of course, you still need to treat the tank for the flukes then.

Jay