Multibar Angelfish dying, lying on side

Montagne

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My multi bar angel has been less active, mostly standing under rocks for about a week, stopped eating four days ago and as of today laying on its side with an arched back.

It’s about 3” with noticeable male cheek spines and no residual eye spot so I believe a full adult. I’ve had it for 3 full months and it has always eaten heartily (seeming to prefer mysis shrimp to seaweed), arriving in good condition and maintaining its weight. There are absolutely no spots, lesions, scale protrusions or anything else visibly wrong with it other than its arched body position. He seems to be completely exhausted and I was able to pick him up off the substrate by hand. He’s been lying on the bottom of a breeder box for about 6 hours, breathing normally (not rapidly) and rarely moving around but not being able to right himself. Earlier id put him in a small container to encourage feeding and he spat food out.

Water chemistry (0, 0, 10), salinity, temperature and water clarity are all normal. Readings were verified by my LFS earlier today. The angelfish is the most recent addition. I did a 30% water change about 5 days ago. No medications are currently being dosed in the water, he’s not eating for food medications and I don’t think he’d survive a FW dip.

Potentially of note is that I had a striped blenny I’d had for 6 months die just ten days ago. The progression was similar that it became lethargic for about a week before I found it dead on the sandbed looking otherwise healthy. The blenny had been in a separate tank that sometimes shares water.

Please share any thoughts, it would be nice to have some theory on why I’m losing favorite months old fish in quick succession without any apparent issues.

44A447A5-7B90-4E63-8223-B8D0A5C8D1B0.jpeg
 

cshouston

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Was it quarantined? Hard to tell anything from that photo. Other fish in the tank? Curved spine makes me think it may have darted into the glass or rockwork and injured its spine. Could also be Ichthyophonus fungal disease, but would need a better photo and more data for differential diagnosis.

Ichthyophonus is transmissible through the water, since you mentioned it sharing water with the other tank.
 
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Montagne

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No quarantine, has been in the display for 3 months.

Other fish are a kamohara blenny, two clowns and a lubbocks wrasse. The Lubbocks wrasse can be a d to the blenny and the female clown likes to bite my hand but the multi bar is far bigger than the other fish and they leave him alone.

It started off laying flat in the breeder box and over the course of a few hours seemed to bunch up like that. It’s not able to swim at all so I don’t think it could work up the speed to injure itself.

The picture is just to demonstrate the weird body position. I’ve looked at it a tonne today and absolutely cannot see anything and don’t want to disturb it any more to get a clear picture showing the lack of anything externally visible on it. If it ends up dying I’ll post more pictures.
 

Jay Hemdal

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Sorry - while I understand that you want to have some resolution for this issue, there simply are not any symptoms that I can decipher that would lead me to a good course of action here. This is a real puzzler! The arched body position is the only real clue, but I can't really make it out in the picture. I'm not sure what that could be - mechanical injury? Sometimes, emaciation will cause scoliosis, but the fish was feeding well beforehand.

Jay
 

Jay Hemdal

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No quarantine, has been in the display for 3 months.

Other fish are a kamohara blenny, two clowns and a lubbocks wrasse. The Lubbocks wrasse can be a d to the blenny and the female clown likes to bite my hand but the multi bar is far bigger than the other fish and they leave him alone.

It started off laying flat in the breeder box and over the course of a few hours seemed to bunch up like that. It’s not able to swim at all so I don’t think it could work up the speed to injure itself.

The picture is just to demonstrate the weird body position. I’ve looked at it a tonne today and absolutely cannot see anything and don’t want to disturb it any more to get a clear picture showing the lack of anything externally visible on it. If it ends up dying I’ll post more pictures.

Any chance of a video?

Jay
 

Uncle99

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Can you clarify water chemistry (0,0,10)?
Not seen this presentation before.
I’m thinking parasite, we don’t always see visual confirmation.
I say this with some reservation based on the recent death of the Benny same labored breathing.
This behavior I have seen hundreds of times, many times, Ick, sometimes we find no definitive answers.
It’s impossible to treat effectively without an accurate diagnosis,
 
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Montagne

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He’s gone, it was moving around less and less over the past couple of hours so figured that was inevitable. Pictures attached.

0,0,10 = 0 Ammonia, 0 Nitrite, 10 Nitrate
Neither fish showed labored breathing, just lethargy.

Multi bars are marked as expert only on live aquaria, which id figured meant that we’re prone to not initially eatingn on arrival. However, I can’t find much info one way or another. Could this be anything latent, similar to cyanide capture’s mechanism, that they’d be susceptible to?

D7B2A9FE-C0B4-4E35-93DD-BE4CE0846740.jpeg 9480B0F6-BA81-4E38-8D3B-2C96DF7F9AB6.jpeg A3A2F845-CA99-4F4D-9941-9EC978A99843.jpeg 33A2CDF3-CEF4-4765-8A78-C385DE1236C2.png
 
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cshouston

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Sorry to hear that it didn’t make it. Hopefully, Jay can give you some insight since he’s the resident expert, but as he said, sometimes there’s no good answer to be had. It would probably require a necropsy and microscopic examination.
 

Jay Hemdal

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Very sorry to hear of the loss.

All I can see is that the fish seemed to be getting thinner from Sept. until now - looking at the nape, not the belly. As I had mentioned, emaciation will sometimes cause scoliosis. Even though the fish was eating, there may not have been proper assimilation of the food.

"Back in the day", we would lose these fish after a month or so and I always just attributed it to collection with cyanide. The timeline for your fish makes that less likely, but think about it: You're a diver in the Philippines and you get $5 for each one you catch - trouble is you have to dive to 90' wearing little paddle fins and the hose in your mouth, and try to get them out of a coral crevice - no wonder they resort to using cyanide...

Jay
 
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Montagne

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Hi Jay, I hadn't noticed the weight change on other parts of the fish so that was a great observation, thank you. As well, I ended up reaching out to some others on the forum who have had multibars in the past and there do seem to be several anecdotes around about losing them sometime after acclimation even if they adjust to prepared foods.

Having said that however, my Tanaka's possum wrasse (the one that recovered from the scale damage and/or apparent uronema in September https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/possum-wrasse-w-injury-illness-losing-scales.761156/) is now going through the same pattern - reclusiveness and later loss of appetite so I'm worried I'll be losing them soon too. Its no longer showing up at feeding time so I ended up pulling all of my rocks out of the tank and luckily found it tonight but its now disappeared completely without eating again. It is in my 16g biocube with a yellowhead jawfish that previously had my striped blenny that was the first to go thru this.

Other fish in both tanks seem well again but I'm definitely concerned that this seems to be picking off relatively old residents one by one that had seemed healthy just a week before. I've uploaded a couple more videos to vimeo for an idea of everything's general condition https://vimeo.com/user127164996

The body of the multibar angel is still in my freezer. Can I send it anywhere to ID this before it claims the rest of my fish?
 
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Montagne

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@Jay Hemdal

I was able to scoop up my (previously impossible to catch) possum wrasse and put it in a breeder box for observation. It’s doing better than the multi bar angel was, but is still laying on its side breathing calmly and can’t be coaxed into eating garlic soaked foods or live tigger pods. It looks thin :( Any suggestions for me?

Videos taken today:



video from September w/ uronema sore:
 

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Jay Hemdal

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Yes, it looks thin. The breathing is slow, but deep. I saw it cough a few times, but that could just be a function of being caught up and being in a container. I’m afraid there isn’t anything that can be done for a fish that is lethargic from lack of food- they won’t eat in that state, so they just lose more ground as time goes by. The question is why did this happen? One answer would be Mycobacterium, fish tuberculosis. But I generally only see that in really old fish. Sorry I can’t give you better information.
Jay
 
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Montagne

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Hey @Jay Hemdal, like clockwork back again with another victim. Exact same pattern about a month after the last one. Other fish seem fine and water parameters are normal.

Today this is my Lubbock wrasse that had been in with the multi bar angel and kamohara blenny.

I’ve had it since May last year and it was one of my first fish after setting up my tank. It’s always been my best eater and looks contentedly chunky in older videos (). I’ve watched it lose weight over the past 3+ weeks while still eating regularly until it didn’t show up for dinner last night or today. When I found it hiding under a rock I was able to catch it by hand (ugh). Like all the others, upon transferring it to a container it laid on its side and breathed deeply. It also seems to be coughing

I’d just wrapped up 30 days of copper and had been planning on running a course of prazi and dewormer feedings to finalize a 2 month, cover-all-my-bases course of metro then copper then prazi. All my corals and live rock are still in fallow. What is there still left to try?
 

Jay Hemdal

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Have you tried a freshwater dip to screen for flukes? Gill flukes are tough to see in dip water without a microscope, but the lethargy and coughing symptoms leads me in that direction. There are also rare cases of acute Mycobacterium infections - I normally see that in old fish, but sometimes it takes off in a take and younger fish are affected. I've seen that mostly in freshwater fish though.

Jay
 
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Montagne

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The multibar did come in with flukes visible on its eye and this all started after it arrived so that seems like a reasonable direction to go. I had done freshwater dips on the multi bar and two rounds of prazi on the tank initially but still ended up with the blenny later flashing and showing visible flukes on its black sections. It stopped flashing and I stopped being able to see flukes after the third round of prazi but it still lost weight and died about a month and a half later. Does that make any more sense then? Should I try bringing my tanks down to hyposalinity vs. retrying prazi again? The bottle of prazi is not expired and I pull my skimmer cup and all carbon/purigen/etc for the first three days of dosing so think I’m using it properly and according to directions.
 

Jay Hemdal

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Did you actually see dead flukes in the dips? Did they look like sesame seeds or tiny fish scales? If so then that was Neobenedenia, and I've had best success with hypo at half salinity for 35 days. Some people have gotten rid of it by dosing prazi weekly for four weeks, but there is another issue with that. Have you heard about "prazi resistant flukes"? That is actually a misnomer - what happens is that in aquariums that have been dosed with prazi multiple times, heterotrophic bacteria grow that consume prazi as their food. Subsequent prazi doses to that tank will result in the bacteria eating the prazi before it has time to do any good. I've had tanks that were so bad, daily 4 ppm prazi doses wouldn't work. If I sterilize the tank and start it up again, then prazi works again...for a time.

Jay
 
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Montagne

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re: flukes in prior dips - yes, I saw anywhere from a handful to a couple dozen in the cup afterwards. I think they were probably the sesame seed kind each time. And I have heard of the bacteria issue before from one of my lfs - very bizarre!

As for the lubbock's wrasse, it seemed to be faring well enough for a freshwater dip after work today to the point I needed a net to catch it, but unfortunately turned out was not up to it. I didn't find any sign of flukes in the dip container afterwards this time and even returned the body to the freshwater, repeated the dip and pumped water over the gills with a pipette to see if I could dislodge any thing. Is that fairly conclusive to it not being flukes?
 

Jay Hemdal

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Tough to say if it had flukes or not. Gill flukes are really too small to see in a dip without a microscope, and then, they just look like little balls of snot, so FW dips are really only good for identifying the much larger Neobenedenia.
Jay
 
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