Striped burrfish not eating after injury to eye

[pleing1]

I just started working for a small non-profit in Florida a week ago. Our burrfish (3+ years in our care, no prior issues) is struggling and I'm looking for new ideas to help her eat. Here's what happened:

The burrfish was in a 550g qt tank with some other fish following an unrelated event in the main tank where she previously lived. There was a pump inside the tank for the sole purpose of circulating water. On 6/14, the guard fell off the inflow for the pump and the burrfish got stuck to the inflow hole for a couple minutes before an intern noticed. She had some damage to her right eye--it was swollen--and she got extremely stressed. We moved her to be alone in a 90g tank and blacked it out to calm her down. The eye started getting better, but then recovery stalled out so we started melafix and epsom salt on 6/18. She also laid eggs on 6/16.

Water quality in the tank is closely monitored-no issues. No signs of any infections or parasites. The area around her eye is slightly pale, but it doesn't look like an issue. The eye is healing very nicely, but she is still incredibly stressed out and not eating. I noticed that her belly is starting to look sunken today. I'm getting nervous because it's now been 7 days without eating.

We left her alone to destress after the injury, but started offering food the next day on 6/15. We've tried frozen/thawed shrimp, silversides, and smelt (all favorites from the past) as well as live snails and nightcrawlers. I've cared for these fish in past jobs, and know they can go on hunger strikes from stress, but haven't had one last this long before.

Some things we're considering: moving her to a 300g tank so give her more room and hopefully destress. But that would mean starting the melafix treatment over again since it would be a new tank that hasn't gotten dosed for the last few days. We can go out and try to catch some shrimp from the marsh to see if she wants that. A last resort would be force feeding her. I've never done that before, so if someone has a protocol for doing that or advice, it'd be greatly appreciated. If anyone has any other ideas on how to get her to eat, I'd love to hear it!

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

First - you can skip the Melafix, it is merely a herbal tonic and isn't going to help in the case of a physical injury like this. Likewise the Epsom salts won't help - that is a freshwater treatment that gets misapplied to marine aquariums (the fourth most common salt in seawater mixes are Epsom salts, so adding a bit more serves no benefit).
So - I've told you what won't work, what will? I don't know!

If the eye seems healed and if the fish can see o.k. out of it, I think the fish is just stressed. In that regard, betting it back to its previous tank should help with that.

Here is an excerpt from my upcoming fish disease book on tube feeding:

The tube-feeding process can be employed to give the fish food energy during the time it is anorexic. In some cases, this gives the aquarist enough time to determine a permanent solution. This process uses simple equipment—a syringe and a flexible plastic tube. Feline urinary catheters or avian tracheal tubes can be used for small fishes. Larger fishes can be fed using standard airline tubing attached to a large syringe. A Luer-lock syringe will hold the feeding tube more securely to the syringe body. Placing the tube is easier if you first bevel the end of it. The tube should have marks on it at regular intervals so you can more easily judge the depth of insertion.

The basic food recipe is to create a liquid that will easily pass through the feeding syringe and tube but is thick enough to carry a high amount of calories to the animal’s digestive tract with the least amount of water. It is best to prepare this slurry in a blender, using components of the fish’s normal diet.

The amount of food administered at one feeding is generally 2 to 4% of the animal’s body weight, just enough food to cause a slight distension of the animal’s belly. In most cases, the use of an anesthetic, such as MS-222, is required to sedate the fish so the tube can be inserted. Holding the fish on its back, gently insert the tube into its mouth and try to locate the esophagus. If you are too far to one side or the other, the tube will miss and emerge from under one of the gill covers. Once in place, gentle pressure on the syringe plunger will move the liquid food into the fish’s stomach. Once fed, the tube is gently withdrawn and the fish is moved to a recovery tank.

Spontaneous regurgitation is the most commonly seen problem, though there are also reports of people accidentally rupturing the fish’s digestive tract. Like any medical procedure, there are subtle techniques for this process that need to be learned through practice—so please do not expect to read this basic introduction and suddenly be proficient at tube-feeding fish.


Jay