Struggling with Anthias in QT

[Reefolution]

Hello,

I have a 20 gallon QT with HOB filter and air stone. The HOB has a Bio-wheel and I've added some bio media in it as well. I have a Seachem Ammonia badge and have seeded the QT with Seachem Stability and have no detectable ammonia. The temperature is steady at 78F and I change 10% water every couple of days and have some plastic plants and PVC for shelter.

The fish all small, 4 Lyretail Anthias, 4 Chromis, Lawnmower Blenny, and Midas Blenny, arrived at 1.018sg and I matched my QT to the bag water. In the first two days I lost 3 of the Chromis to Uronema. I started to dose the "Triple Threat" of Kanaplex, MetroPlex, and Furan-2 on the second day and managed to save the last Chromis and the other fish after a 14 day treatment.

After a removing the antibiotics using carbon and water changes, I started dosing Copper Power (Exp.05/2024). I raised the copper level over three days to 2.04ppm measured with the Hanna Checker.

After 14 days of copper over 2.0ppm (water change water pretreated with copper) one of the Anthias was breathing heavy and scratching her gills on a PVC pipe. I've had these fish for over a month now so I was surprised to see this. The next day things were much worse so I dosed 5ml of PraziPro (Exp.12/2021) to the QT thinking it might be flukes, even though there was still copper in the tank. That night the fish was much worse so I preformed a 5min freshwater dip. Unfortunately the fish died after being back in the tank for less than ten minutes. The rest of the fish seemed to be doing fine. I saw no flukes in the freshwater dip bucket.

4 days after the first PraziPro treatment a second Anthias started to breath heavily, so I dosed a second treatment of 5ml of PraziPro. Since the copper is still at therapeutic levels, I was concerned about the oxygen levels because the water started to become cloudy. So after 24hrs I transferred all the fish to a fresh QT with the same specifications and dosed Seachem Stability. The fish responded well and all became more active and energetic.

5 days later I followed up with a third 5ml PraziPro treatment in the new QT with no copper. All seems good and the fish are very active. Over the next week I slowly raised the salinity to 1.026sg.

8 days later one of my Anthias is acting strange, staying at the top of the tank and occasionally swimming down to scratch on a PVC pipe. So I just dosed my fourth treatment of 5ml of PraziPro. I checked my PraziPro and it is not expired and still has a pink hue to it, so it should be good.

What could I be missing? Copper was at therapeutic levels for a total of 18 days followed by an immediate transfer to a clean QT more than 10ft away, which should have taken care of ICH. The only symptoms have been scratching and heavy breathing, I have not seen and spots on the fish. I even looked for flukes in the bucket after the freshwater dip on the fish that died and did not find any. So far the PraziPro has seemed to improve the fish health for a period of time then the symptoms return. But I have now done four treatments for flukes at Day 1,5,10, and now 18! Do I need a stronger dose of PraziPro?, more often?, or is it something else like ICH or a Prazi resistant strain of flukes?

Any insight would be appreciated.

Thank you!

 

[Gareth elliott]

Reread
didnt realize you started with abx for 14 days.

this might be ammonia burns.
As small tank, lots of meds,

Catching all the fish might be difficult given their number. If dont mind dying the ornaments blue, can dose methylene blue to the aquarium.

First id do a water change and get most of the meds out.
I dose at 1/8 the normal bath dosage, have done this amount safely in transport bags for 24 hours when moving.(edited the hours)
but would await the others i tagged before doing anything.

@HotRocks @Big G @4FordFamily

 

[4FordFamily]

Next time I’d start with copper and hold off on antibiotics other than metroplex for the first 14 day transfer. Metroplex treats uronema, a common issue in anthia.

Though you say you don’t see ammonia, I agree it sounds like a culprit. Is this a new badge or somewhat aged? Seachem stability is... not good. Biospira is best (for the money and availability) and Dr Tim’s is another option.

Back to the uronema — to properly treat for this, fish need to eat metroplex or general cure soaked foods with seachem focus (to bind the meds to the food). This is because uronema is every bit as much of an internal disease as it is external. @Humblefish has performed autopsies of deceased fish that seemed to die without cause to find it internally, even around the spine of injured wrasse!

Sorry for your losses but assuming you didn’t cross contaminate with nets or arms in tanks or something else, and other than the mentioning above — you should be in good shape.

 

[Reefolution]

Reread
didnt realize you started with abx for 14 days.

this might be ammonia burns.
As small tank, lots of meds,

Catching all the fish might be difficult given their number. If dont mind dying the ornaments blue, can dose methylene blue to the aquarium.

First id do a water change and get most of the meds out.
I dose at 1/8 the normal bath dosage, have done this amount safely in transport bags for 48 hours when moving.
but would await the others i tagged before doing anything.

@HotRocks @Big G @4FordFamily

Thanks for the quick reply. The first time symptoms showed up there was only copper in the tank. I was finished with the antibiotics. That was about 4 weeks after arrival and two weeks of only copper. My Seachem ammonia badge never went higher than the safe yellow. The fish have been in clean saltwater with no medication for about 5 days before I noticed the concerning behavior today. The only medicines that were mixed was for 5 days of copper and prazi before being transferred to the new QT which only had one dose of prazi.

 

[Reefolution]

Next time I’d start with copper and hold off on antibiotics other than metroplex for the first 14 day transfer. Metroplex treats uronema, a common issue in anthia.

Though you say you don’t see ammonia, I agree it sounds like a culprit. Is this a new badge or somewhat aged? Seachem stability is... not good. Biospira is best (for the money and availability) and Dr Tim’s is another option.

Back to the uronema — to properly treat for this, fish need to eat metroplex or general cure soaked foods with seachem focus (to bind the meds to the food). This is because uronema is every bit as much of an internal disease as it is external. @Humblefish has performed autopsies of deceased fish that seemed to die without cause to find it internally, even around the spine of injured wrasse!

Sorry for your losses but assuming you didn’t cross contaminate with nets or arms in tanks or something else, and other than the mentioning above — you should be in good shape.

Thank you for your advise. I will switch to Biospira in the future and buy a new Seachem badge. I did a 50% water change this morning before dosing the PraziPro. If there is undetected ammonia that should help. The other fish seem to not be affected which is strange if it's ammonia? Should I dose some Prime to play it safe? I will start feeding metroplex with focus for a two week treatment even though I haven't seen any uronema symptoms in a month to be safe. Thanks.