Purple Tang. Flared Gills + Rapid Breating

[TinyMagikarp]

Hi Everyone.

First a preemptive apology for the cyano outbreak. I'm currently mid battling that and it's halfway cleared up.

I have a purple tang that has always had pretty rapid breathing. However for the past couple of days I noticed that its right gill looked to be flared and that it was in some discomfort. It is eating just fine though I noticed last night that it seemed to have a little trouble picking and swallowing some crushed shrimp. It seems better today. It lives in a 210 with a queen angel, sailfin, blue tang, copperband, pair of clowns, a blue damsel, and some shrimps + snails. The copperband I THINK is also showing some signs of gill discomfort. I was wondering if anybody could give me a guess at what's wrong with it. I suspected gill flukes or something of the sort and dosed the entire DT today with prazipro. The queen angel is semi agressive when i'm standing in front of the tank and chases the other fish around for attention. I suspect it's also a possible injury.

Some additional context. All the fish in here have never shown signs of ich while in this current tank. The queen angel survived a previous tank crash (different tank) from velvet/ich but since then all of the purple's companion fish have gone through copper treatment + quarantine. The purple and blue tang came from another aquarist in the area who quarantined them all. I tend to believe them as they had the fish with a spotless achilles tang. The purple and copperband have been in this tank for about a year and 4 months at this point. They were all added at once. A few corals were all that I added in the year plus they've been in the tank. The corals were not quarantined. The last coral was added more than six months ago.

I've attached a couple videos to try to show the gills as best I can. It's a little hard to see.

Thanks!

 

[vetteguy53081]

Often this occurs with gill flukes and low oxygen. other fish seemed unbothered which questions the actual cause. Any injury or damage to gill plate you can see?
You mentioned crushed shrimp and a shell particle could be another cause.

 

[TinyMagikarp]

Additional footage

 

[TinyMagikarp]

Often this occurs with gill flukes and low oxygen. other fish seemed unbothered which questions the actual cause. Any injury or damage to gill plate you can see?
You mentioned crushed shrimp and a shell particle could be another cause.

I don't think I see any obvious signs of injury. As for crushed shrimp I use shell-less little salad shrimps though there was a piece of shell in there the other day. I don't think he got it though.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I don't think I see any obvious signs of injury. As for crushed shrimp I use shell-less little salad shrimps though there was a piece of shell in there the other day. I don't think he got it though.

Are gills red or slightly swollen?

 

[TinyMagikarp]

Are gills red or slightly swollen?

I see the red gills on the side that's protruding. No redness on the gill plates.

Hmm as for swelling I can't really tell. I want to say no.

 

[TinyMagikarp]

Are gills red or slightly swollen?

Now that it's dark and the fish is slow I was able to take a better look. There looks to be pretty significant swelling in the right gill. I've taken a photo of it best I could. Just under the red part of the gill, that part is all swollen.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Now that it's dark and the fish is slow I was able to take a better look. There looks to be pretty significant swelling in the right gill. I've taken a photo of it best I could. Just under the red part of the gill, that part is all swollen.

Thats what I thought. Thanks for confirming. This may be a bacterial gill issue which occurs occasionally and can be caused by minor injury, overcrowded tank, overfeeding, leading to swollen deformed gills and even respiratory issues. Optimum water quality will assist with this disease and to prevent it in the future. Antibiotic such as Furan or seachem Kanaplex may help with this swelling.

 

[TinyMagikarp]

Thats what I thought. Thanks for confirming. This may be a bacterial gill issue which occurs occasionally and can be caused by minor injury, overcrowded tank, overfeeding, leading to swollen deformed gills and even respiratory issues. Optimum water quality will assist with this disease and to prevent it in the future. Antibiotic such as Furan or seachem Kanaplex may help with this swelling.

Hmm I've definitely been feeding them a lot. Thanks I'll do a water change and try some of those other options. Thanks!

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Hi Everyone.

First a preemptive apology for the cyano outbreak. I'm currently mid battling that and it's halfway cleared up.

I have a purple tang that has always had pretty rapid breathing. However for the past couple of days I noticed that its right gill looked to be flared and that it was in some discomfort. It is eating just fine though I noticed last night that it seemed to have a little trouble picking and swallowing some crushed shrimp. It seems better today. It lives in a 210 with a queen angel, sailfin, blue tang, copperband, pair of clowns, a blue damsel, and some shrimps + snails. The copperband I THINK is also showing some signs of gill discomfort. I was wondering if anybody could give me a guess at what's wrong with it. I suspected gill flukes or something of the sort and dosed the entire DT today with prazipro. The queen angel is semi agressive when i'm standing in front of the tank and chases the other fish around for attention. I suspect it's also a possible injury.

Some additional context. All the fish in here have never shown signs of ich while in this current tank. The queen angel survived a previous tank crash (different tank) from velvet/ich but since then all of the purple's companion fish have gone through copper treatment + quarantine. The purple and blue tang came from another aquarist in the area who quarantined them all. I tend to believe them as they had the fish with a spotless achilles tang. The purple and copperband have been in this tank for about a year and 4 months at this point. They were all added at once. A few corals were all that I added in the year plus they've been in the tank. The corals were not quarantined. The last coral was added more than six months ago.

I've attached a couple videos to try to show the gills as best I can. It's a little hard to see.

Thanks!

The fish do seem to have some chronic gill issue and possibly anemia as well. Given the time frame and history, it is unlikely that this is due to an infectious disease.

First thing to check is if the tank has good aeration (not just circulation). A protein skimmer helps with that, as will a good air stone. If nothing else, increasing the aeration can help support a fish that is having breathing problems from some other cause.

The next thing I'd look at is the fish's diet. Thiamin deficiency can cause long term issues, and cooked salad shrimp has thiaminase in it, so it really doesn't have much thiamin in it. Do you feed any prepared food that all fish will eat? You should look for food that has added thiamin (B1) as well as vitamin E.

 

[TinyMagikarp]

The fish do seem to have some chronic gill issue and possibly anemia as well. Given the time frame and history, it is unlikely that this is due to an infectious disease.

First thing to check is if the tank has good aeration (not just circulation). A protein skimmer helps with that, as will a good air stone. If nothing else, increasing the aeration can help support a fish that is having breathing problems from some other cause.

The next thing I'd look at is the fish's diet. Thiamin deficiency can cause long term issues, and cooked salad shrimp has thiaminase in it, so it really doesn't have much thiamin in it. Do you feed any prepared food that all fish will eat? You should look for food that has added thiamin (B1) as well as vitamin E.

I have a fairly large protein skimmer in the sump that I added in about a month and a half ago so the aeration should be fairly solid.

As for their diet, they're mainly fed spirulina mysis & I wanna say omega enriched brine. The shrimp i crush is mainly for diversification. I also give them nori but not as consistently. Their diet is very meat heavy which is probably not optimal.

 

[TinyMagikarp]

The fish do seem to have some chronic gill issue and possibly anemia as well. Given the time frame and history, it is unlikely that this is due to an infectious disease.

First thing to check is if the tank has good aeration (not just circulation). A protein skimmer helps with that, as will a good air stone. If nothing else, increasing the aeration can help support a fish that is having breathing problems from some other cause.

The next thing I'd look at is the fish's diet. Thiamin deficiency can cause long term issues, and cooked salad shrimp has thiaminase in it, so it really doesn't have much thiamin in it. Do you feed any prepared food that all fish will eat? You should look for food that has added thiamin (B1) as well as vitamin E.

the copperband didn't really eat this morning which is highly unusual. do you suggest taking the purple and copperband out and treat with something like kanaplex?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

the copperband didn't really eat this morning which is highly unusual. do you suggest taking the purple and copperband out and treat with something like kanaplex?

Yes - the not eating is a serious sign. I'm not sure this is bacterial though. Do you have an established treatment tank you can use? The kanaplex (or neoplex) would at least be a start.

 

[TinyMagikarp]

Yes - the not eating is a serious sign. I'm not sure this is bacterial though. Do you have an established treatment tank you can use? The kanaplex (or neoplex) would at least be a start.

i have an empty 55 i can hopefully put the copperband into. im somewhat worried getting him out will really stress him. i think i'm going to try to do it after dark when its asleep

he's been swimming into the powerhead a lot today

 

[Jay Hemdal]

i have an empty 55 i can hopefully put the copperband into. im somewhat worried getting him out will really stress him. i think i'm going to try to do it after dark when its asleep

he's been swimming into the powerhead a lot today

Yes, capturing fish can be tough. I just think if you don’t treat it with something, it will just go downhill further.
Sometimes, holding the net at the bottom of the tank and chasing the fish into it works better than chasing the fish around with a net. If you do t get it right away, stop and try something else - I’ve seen people literally kill fish chasing them around the tank trying to catch them.

 

[TinyMagikarp]

Yes, capturing fish can be tough. I just think if you don’t treat it with something, it will just go downhill further.
Sometimes, holding the net at the bottom of the tank and chasing the fish into it works better than chasing the fish around with a net. If you do t get it right away, stop and try something else - I’ve seen people literally kill fish chasing them around the tank trying to catch them.

So all my fish are back to their regular very hungry selves. I've always had low flow in this tank so I upgraded my powerheads and now there's a ton of flow.

Their gills remain unchanged. The purple tang still has a big swollen white chunk in his gill. Could this be a tumor? If not would you expect it to eventually subside?
I'm currently not planning on taking them out of the tank to avoid stress since they're not exhibiting any signs of stress and are eating voraciously.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

So all my fish are back to their regular very hungry selves. I've always had low flow in this tank so I upgraded my powerheads and now there's a ton of flow.

Their gills remain unchanged. The purple tang still has a big swollen white chunk in his gill. Could this be a tumor? If not would you expect it to eventually subside?
I'm currently not planning on taking them out of the tank to avoid stress since they're not exhibiting any signs of stress and are eating voraciously.

I went back and looked at the videos again. I wonder if there are two issues? One is the rapid breathing/not eating and the other is the swollen gill on the purple tang. The fish are all eating again, right? Is their breathing rate slowing down? If so, I would write that off as lack of aeration, which you may have fixed by increasing the flow.

The swelling under the tang's gill could be a goiter. This is caused when either a lack of iodine or some goiter causing compound causes the fish's thyroid gland to increase in size. Due to its location, goiter shows up as a white swelling inside one or both gills.

Goiter is tough to treat in small fish. Adding iodine to the water rarely works. The best you can do is try to ensure that the fish's diet contains enough iodine. With sharks for example, adding potassium iodide to the food at 2.5 mg per pound of food - that just doesn't work for small fish though, since dosing that small amount in their food is virtually impossible.

 

[TinyMagikarp]

I went back and looked at the videos again. I wonder if there are two issues? One is the rapid breathing/not eating and the other is the swollen gill on the purple tang. The fish are all eating again, right? Is their breathing rate slowing down? If so, I would write that off as lack of aeration, which you may have fixed by increasing the flow.

The swelling under the tang's gill could be a goiter. This is caused when either a lack of iodine or some goiter causing compound causes the fish's thyroid gland to increase in size. Due to its location, goiter shows up as a white swelling inside one or both gills.

Goiter is tough to treat in small fish. Adding iodine to the water rarely works. The best you can do is try to ensure that the fish's diet contains enough iodine. With sharks for example, adding potassium iodide to the food at 2.5 mg per pound of food - that just doesn't work for small fish though, since dosing that small amount in their food is virtually impossible.

Their rapid breathing has not changed. As far as I remember, they've been breathing rapidly since day one.

Hmm considering that the purple's diet has been very mysis/brine/meat heavy, maybe there is a nutritional deficiency. I feed them nori but honestly I don't do that very consistently at all.

 

[TinyMagikarp]

I went back and looked at the videos again. I wonder if there are two issues? One is the rapid breathing/not eating and the other is the swollen gill on the purple tang. The fish are all eating again, right? Is their breathing rate slowing down? If so, I would write that off as lack of aeration, which you may have fixed by increasing the flow.

The swelling under the tang's gill could be a goiter. This is caused when either a lack of iodine or some goiter causing compound causes the fish's thyroid gland to increase in size. Due to its location, goiter shows up as a white swelling inside one or both gills.

Goiter is tough to treat in small fish. Adding iodine to the water rarely works. The best you can do is try to ensure that the fish's diet contains enough iodine. With sharks for example, adding potassium iodide to the food at 2.5 mg per pound of food - that just doesn't work for small fish though, since dosing that small amount in their food is virtually impossible.

more context:
I feed these fish a lot. At least 12 cubes (6 cubes spirulina mysis 6 omega fortified brine) plus some crushed shrimp plus nori sheets occasionally.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

more context:
I feed these fish a lot. At least 12 cubes (6 cubes spirulina mysis 6 omega fortified brine) plus some crushed shrimp plus nori sheets occasionally.

Sometimes goiter (or other tumors) just show up, even with fish being fed a good diet. Now, I'm not saying that is goiter for sure, just that I cannot rule it out.

How are the fish today? Still eating but breathing fast?