softiesplease
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So I should do nothing for display tank?
Purple Firefish Disease
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Jay Hemdal
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Do you think any got loose in your tank?
There isn’t any treatment that will kill isopods that won’t harm other animals.
Most people end up trapping isopods….
softiesplease
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I’m willing to say 99% they didn’t leave the gill cavity before I removed for a freshwater dip. It was like they finally all released from growing or feeding deep inside the fish when the freshwater made them, maybe prematurely or maybe I managed to get the fish out luckily days or hours before it would have happened naturally in my tank. They all came out at once in the first FW dip and none came out during the subsequent FW dips. I think I got lucky.
So it is safe to do a FW dip if I manage to catch my current fish when it is convenient if I can do catch with a container not a net to avoid stress? Or just leave it alone until I potentially see new evidence.
Jay Hemdal
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I would just wait for similar symptoms, if they develop. This must be a fairly rare occurrence, as I have not seen it myself. It may well be something tied to this species....
Jay
Sorry this happened but definetly interesting read tgrough. Hopefully fish can survive. At least now there is documentation for tgis and seemed treatable with a fw dip. For infected fish.
softiesplease
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Ok thanks so much Jay, I wish I was able to be more prepared for this to save a specimen and get it under a microscope. I’ll have to check the QT tank and see if any dead parasites are in the water and try to get images.
I do hope this is tied to the species, that is my gut instinct based on the timeline of events, wild caught, other possible vectors of disease, and the state of my other fishes added both before and after the firefish. Along with the resources I’ve read from you and anything else i could find on the internet when searching any combination of “parasite isopod copepod firefish gill swollen gnathiid” haha.
I wish I managed to notice the bulge sooner, I’d be more confident that none of those things left the firefish and slipped into the water column, but based on how they all came out of the firefish in FW dip at once I am sticking with 99% none emerged from the firefish while in the tank. The firefish may have also had a better fate. I think there’s an important lesson to learn for anyone keeping a new species that you should look at a lot of healthy specimens to know what they should look like. It is unlikely I would have recognized this even if the fish was in a 30 day or longer QT/observation period when I got it, since it took me 5 months or so to pull the fish.
Saul Goodfish the purple firefish still isn’t eating, if his swimming gets even worse I may have to euthanize I believe. I don’t see it surviving long term. It seems like most of these parasites are fatal. One of the first marine fish I got, the first wild caught marine fish iirc.
Very much appreciate the help from Jay and the entire r2r site.
softiesplease
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Thank you, this is very interesting to me along with how horrifying / sad it is. I would have loved to be more prepared to get more documentation on this. It’s hard to say if caught earlier if the FW dip would have forced the parasite out, and if the health of the fish would have been better. I do believe that if you had another fish at the condition mine was in, a FW dip would at least make the detection very easy, but I would not say treatable for sure. This is just my feeling based on witnessing for myself.
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