Lubbock wrasse with reduced swim coordination and stopped eating.

[KGV]

Rather sudden, my favourite wrasse has trouble swimming in a coordinated fashion. He tends to be taken more often by the flow and is often tilted 45 degree sideways. Also, tail tends to droop more than normal. Moreover, stopped eating almost entirely. He approaches food but doesn't take it. I know this is all rather subtle and hard to explain so here is a video on YouTube:

Perhaps @Jay Hemdal can weigh in?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

Does the fish have any missing scales? I couldn’t quite tell from the video.

Ive been seeing a lot of apparent neurological issues with fairy and flasher wrasse, I’m not sure what the true issue is. The one that I had with this that died didn’t get sent out for histopathology, so I lost that chance to learn more. It may even be caused by multiple things.
Your fish isn’t quite behaving like the classic case, but is probably similar. I wish I had some treatment to offer you, but other than wild guesses or shotgun approaches, I got nothing!
Jay

 

[KGV]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

Does the fish have any missing scales? I couldn’t quite tell from the video.

Ive been seeing a lot of apparent neurological issues with fairy and flasher wrasse, I’m not sure what the true issue is. The one that I had with this that died didn’t get sent out for histopathology, so I lost that chance to learn more. It may even be caused by multiple things.
Your fish isn’t quite behaving like the classic case, but is probably similar. I wish I had some treatment to offer you, but other than wild guesses or shotgun approaches, I got nothing!
Jay

No missing scales. But indeed similar to other cases posted on R2R. Too bad nobody posted what the eventual fate of their fish was.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

No missing scales. But indeed similar to other cases posted on R2R. Too bad nobody posted what the eventual fate of their fish was.

No missing scales. But indeed similar to other cases posted on R2R. Too bad nobody posted what the eventual fate of their fish was.

I know, lots of posts are “lost to follow up”. I presume those fish didn’t make it. I ran some evaluations of thread outcomes, as you might expect, many of the fish end up dying....makes me a bit depressed at times.
Jay

 

[KGV]

No missing scales. But indeed similar to other cases posted on R2R. Too bad nobody posted what the eventual fate of their fish was.

I know, lots of posts are “lost to follow up”. I presume those fish didn’t make it. I ran some evaluations of thread outcomes, as you might expect, many of the fish end up dying....makes me a bit depressed at times.
Jay

It's going downhill with this fish. Sitting in its cave, movement control got worse. In addition I will add two observations that may be useful for others later; I am pretty sure that the Lubbock was "yawning" more than usual. I presume this is to get more water through the gills? In addition, I did see him scraping his flanks against the rock, but only rarely.

@Jay Hemdal Perhaps it would be useful to analyze this fish. I am pretty sure it won't make it by tomorrow. I run a neuroscience research lab, so I have the tools and experience for small animal dissections, just not fish. Is there a place on R2R where we have dissection protocols and what microscopic preparations to make? Else, perhaps you can guide me what to look for in this guy? I can post the results on the forum and that may be useful for others.

Cheers!

 

[Jay Hemdal]

The yawning and flashing are two symptoms of flukes. Have you tried giving it a freshwater diagnostic dip?
The danger of course is that when weak, the dip may kill the fish, but not dipping a fish that has flukes will also eventually be fatal. Even if the fish dies, if it is found fresh, it should still be given a dip to look for flukes - in order to plan for any other exposed fish.

Jay

 

[KGV]

Just to follow up this post. The wrasse did not recover. I put him in QT and treated with praziquantel but that didn't change matters. He got worse in that his tail started drooping more and more to the point where he was hanging vertical and only used his pectorial fins. Then it got even worse when he started spinning around his access, being slave to the flow. At the point, I euthanized him because this seemed like the point of no return and I wanted to avoid unnecessary suffering. So from first observation to death took about 5 days. I did not do anything histological analysis since several posts pointed towards a possible neurological cause, and that seemed very hard to analyze.