Mandarin stopped eating

[Aquajan]

Hi,

I have a manderijn goby that stopped eating or doing anything.
It just lays on the bottom with all his fins up like he is feeling treated and is breathing heavily.
Last week I have added a bunch of snails and corals and I noticed after I added the corals that his guard was up (fins all up).
But I'm not 100% shure that it wasn't already.
The only other thing I can think of is that the phosfate rx might have damaged hiss gills.
I dosed 24 drops in 150g 3 days befor I added the corals.
And I dosed it in the overflow box with a 25 micron filtersock in the sump.
All other fish including 2 tangs are all fine.

I target feed the mandarin every day with frozen but now he does not eat it anymore (was eating less and less at past days) and there are plenty of pods in the tank too.

It seems like there is something stuck in his throat or gills or something..

Does any one has an idea what to do?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Start with checking ammonia and nitrate level

 

[Aquajan]

Hi thanks for responding.

Nitrate is 10, phosfate 0,07 and is don't know what the ammonia level is as I don't have a ammonia test set anymore.
I have 2 tanks that share a sump, one is running for 3 years and the other for 1 year now so I don't think ammonia is the problem.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Hi,

I have a manderijn goby that stopped eating or doing anything.
It just lays on the bottom with all his fins up like he is feeling treated and is breathing heavily.
Last week I have added a bunch of snails and corals and I noticed after I added the corals that his guard was up (fins all up).
But I'm not 100% shure that it wasn't already.
The only other thing I can think of is that the phosfate rx might have damaged hiss gills.
I dosed 24 drops in 150g 3 days befor I added the corals.
And I dosed it in the overflow box with a 25 micron filtersock in the sump.
All other fish including 2 tangs are all fine.

I target feed the mandarin every day with frozen but now he does not eat it anymore (was eating less and less at past days) and there are plenty of pods in the tank too.

It seems like there is something stuck in his throat or gills or something..

Does any one has an idea what to do?

The fish isn't breathing correctly, but I cannot tell you why. If you watch, it is breathing too fast, and its gills move more often than its mouth does. I've never seen a fish do that before. The extended fins can be a sign of alarm/stress in this species.

The only thing to try would be a 5 minute freshwater dip - to see if there are any gill parasites. If the fish does better a day or so after the dip, then gill parasites would be confirmed and you might then dose the tank with prazipro.

Jay

 

[Aquajan]

Just did the freshwater dip.
Anly some slime is comming off the fish with some dots in it that look like air bubbles.

 

[Aquajan]

Some pictures from the slime under a microscope 100x

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Some pictures from the slime under a microscope 100x

Nothing really stands out in the microscope.

The fish may become worse after the dip, but if it improves tomorrow, then that indicates some sort of gill parasite that will have to be dealt with. If it is the same tomorrow, then it is some other non-parasite issue.

Jay

 

[john92708]

how many days have he been breathing heavily and stop eating? did you QT or dip the corals? did you got them from the LFS or from another reefer where there's less chance of disease? Is your water parameter okay?
I would just make sure your water parameters are in line and wait and observe. Don't treat him for disease or FW dip unless you're sure he have disease and what kind. treating him for unknown disease would only stress him out even more.

my stop eating for like 4 days when I caused a mini cycle when I clean the filter too much, rises SG from 1.022 to 1.0255, and overdose on all for reef. I did a 40% water change and 2 days later he's breathing was back to to normal and they started eating again.

 

[Aquajan]

Today the mandarin does not seem to have improved.
I just feed a lot of artemia napuli to see it he would eat something but he does not.

I did not overdosed anything.
The only thing I could think off is the phosfate rx but the only times I hear people lost fish of lanthanum chloride is when they used the stuf for a swimming pool.
And I once overdosed phosfate rx and used 50 drops on 150G and
the only one that got stressed about that was me.

My water parameters should be fine.
Kh 8
Ca 430
Mg 1500
P04 0,07
No3 10
S 1.026
T 24,6°C

The manderin hasn't been eating for at least 4 days now.
And all other fish are perfectly fine.

I did not quarantined my new corals, I only diped them in coral rx pro for 10 minutes.
I just lost way to many corals in a qt so I stopped doing that.
The corals came from 3 different online stores.
Two of them have their own aquaculture farms and one of them I'm pretty sure it's from Australia (3x torch) .

I have some blue life safety stop.
Should I give this a try?

 

[DaJMasta]

I don't have an answer for you, but the fins up and not moving is a sure sign of stress. I've seen them do this in low oxygen events, and suspect I've seen a similar behavior when a cucumber is killed and releases toxins into the water. You could try running carbon to see if it's something in the water column, you could try moving it to a quarantine tank to see if you can observe him more closely or just keep other things away from him. It's also possible he swallowed something that hurt him, but since he hasn't spit it out I don't know what you could do.

4 days is a long time for them to maintain the state of alarm, but I would have expected most of the things that would cause this to have already killed it, so maybe there's some hope left. I use Phosphate Rx in my tank at a similar dosage (10-15 drops per ~45g) in my tank and neither of my mandarins have shown any reaction to it. Have you had any aerosols or foreign dust or debris in the room that could have gotten into the tank?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Today the mandarin does not seem to have improved.
I just feed a lot of artemia napuli to see it he would eat something but he does not.

I did not overdosed anything.
The only thing I could think off is the phosfate rx but the only times I hear people lost fish of lanthanum chloride is when they used the stuf for a swimming pool.
And I once overdosed phosfate rx and used 50 drops on 150G and
the only one that got stressed about that was me.

My water parameters should be fine.
Kh 8
Ca 430
Mg 1500
P04 0,07
No3 10
S 1.026
T 24,6°C

The manderin hasn't been eating for at least 4 days now.
And all other fish are perfectly fine.

I did not quarantined my new corals, I only diped them in coral rx pro for 10 minutes.
I just lost way to many corals in a qt so I stopped doing that.
The corals came from 3 different online stores.
Two of them have their own aquaculture farms and one of them I'm pretty sure it's from Australia (3x torch) .

I have some blue life safety stop.
Should I give this a try?

It looks like it is breathing better to me. Its left eye looks cloudy, like a cataract. Is the right eye the same way?

No the Safety Stop will not do anything that the FW dip would not have done.

Jay

 

[john92708]

I would add new carbon to help eliminate the possibility of toxins in the tank and observe to see if you can identify what's stressing him out. I would not treat him for disease until you know he have something and know what you're treating for or else you're just stressing him out even more. how long have the mandarin been with you? is his stomach really sucked in? maybe he's eating a little while you're not looking?