Uronema or massive infection? Starcki damselfish clearly dying.

[Tired]

CORRECTION: it hasn't stopped breathing, but it is breathing very slowly. Seems not to be conscious.

Possibly urgent- normal injury progression on damselfish, or sore?

I noticed this yesterday, and assumed it was a scrape. There's a spot in this temporary tank where it could have shoved its head into a gap between two shells, gotten stuck, and hurt itself yanking back out, which would explain the raised scales. Is this what we would expect a scrape to look...

www.reef2reef.com

Damselfish that appeared to be slightly injured seemed fine yesterday, and is not today.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/663422124760760331/1089570617222774916/IMG_1122.jpg

I found it lying on the bottom, breathing harder than I've ever seen a fish this size breathe. It had enough strength to fight being caught, but that's it.

I'm assuming that the chance of this fish recovering is slim to none, and it's obviously in severe distress. I am therefore actively in the process of euthanizing it with clove oil, which should hopefully provide an analgesic effect. That is, however, a relatively slow process. If there's a /good/ hope of it recovering, I can take it out. I say good hope because I'm not going to make it die of whatever's going on internally for a 5% chance that it might not die.

Also: there's a dottyback in the same tank with it. What should I do to make sure whatever this is doesn't infect the dottyback, and how concerned do I need to be that I may have cross-contaminated the pair of clownfish in the other tank next door? None have been through QT and medication, so I haven't been bothering with not sharing tools; I assume they just all have dormant ich.

 

[blaxsun]

#fishmedic

 

[Tired]

Correction: has not entirely stopped breathing.

 

[Tired]

Okay; it's breathing very slowly and is unresponsive to being poked. The clove oil seems to have taken effect faster than expected.

I don't know how long it will live in this amount of clove oil. I'm not yet adding more to finish it off, since it's not conscious to suffer, just on the off chance someone has some miracle cure they plan to recommend in the next couple hours.

I'm about to go get something to eat so I don't get really light-headed. I'll update on its condition when I get back.

 

[threebuoys]

EDIT: it has now stopped breathing. I haven't yet dosed enough clove oil to cause this, so I don't know if the few seconds of thrashing and trying to jump out of the bucket was enough to finish it off somehow?
Either way, I am not going to attempt to revive it. I'm going to keep it in increasingly high clove oil until I"m sure it's dead.
So: the dottyback.

Possibly urgent- normal injury progression on damselfish, or sore?

I noticed this yesterday, and assumed it was a scrape. There's a spot in this temporary tank where it could have shoved its head into a gap between two shells, gotten stuck, and hurt itself yanking back out, which would explain the raised scales. Is this what we would expect a scrape to look...

www.reef2reef.com

Damselfish that appeared to be slightly injured seemed fine yesterday, and is not today.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/663422124760760331/1089570617222774916/IMG_1122.jpg

I found it lying on the bottom, breathing harder than I've ever seen a fish this size breathe. It had enough strength to fight being caught, but that's it.

I'm assuming that the chance of this fish recovering is slim to none, and it's obviously in severe distress. I am therefore actively in the process of euthanizing it with clove oil, which should hopefully provide an analgesic effect. That is, however, a relatively slow process. If there's a /good/ hope of it recovering, I can take it out. I say good hope because I'm not going to make it die of whatever's going on internally for a 5% chance that it might not die.

Also: there's a dottyback in the same tank with it. What should I do to make sure whatever this is doesn't infect the dottyback, and how concerned do I need to be that I may have cross-contaminated the pair of clownfish in the other tank next door? None have been through QT and medication, so I haven't been bothering with not sharing tools; I assume they just all have dormant ich.

I don't see any broken skin on the fish. Do you? Are the marks on both sides? How rapidly is he breathing? (Count fort 10 or 15 seconds). Video while in the tank would be helpful. I do not see signs of parasites, but the photo of a fish out of water is not the best for diagnosis.

Without more visual confirmation, I suspect some type of injury within the tank. The injury could have caused internal damage.

You seem to have jumped to euthanasia very quickly. What else have you seen that pushed you in that direction?

 

[Tired]

The marks are on both sides, and what was a small wound yesterday is now much larger, clearly deeper, and much redder. There is water in the dish; that was the first thing that came to hand to transfer it into the bucket.

Quite honestly, my plan was to only put it in a small amount of clove oil. My experience with euthanizing fish in clove oil is that they hit a sort of semi-conscious state pretty fast, with decreased response to stimuli, and will stay there for hours if you don't add more. I was intending to use that as a form of pain relief until I could get confirmation of this being either uronema or an internal infection, both of which seem to have a very low survival rate once the fish gets to the point of lying on the ground gasping. Something has certainly gone very wrong very fast, for it to go from seeming fine to this in 24 hours.
I didn't intend to kill it yet, I just didn't want to leave it to suffer until I got an answer, particularly given the possibility of uronema.
Thing is, when I added the clove oil, it startled at the splashing and put its head through the film of oil on the water's surface. I think that gave it a much larger dose than it would otherwise have gotten; this is far faster than I've seen clove oil take effect on anything.

If it's still breathing, I can't tell.

 

[threebuoys]

Honestly, I don't see anything red in the photo you posted. I do see a big white streak on the upper half of the body, and I see what appears as raised scales along the back and towards the tail. I don't know if the white streak is a wound or a reflection. I should have more clearly stated about in the water. I realize you have water in the dish. I should have said the photo would be more useful if the fish was in his natural state in the tank. I don't see any parasites on the fish in the photo which is good, but doesn't get us to a diagnosis. More natural photo and video may or may not help in diagnosis.

If external uronema, I would expect to see more obvious redness, bruising, or even broken skin than what I see here. Perhaps a photo of both sides would help.

 

[threebuoys]

Do you have wave pumps in the QT that the fish may have brushed against?

 

[Tired]

No wave pumps. There's just a heater, an airstone, and a few shells and sponges to hide behind. It could have wedged itself under two of the shells (the dottyback's house) and scraped itself up that way, which is how I assume it got the initial injury, but there's nothing for it to have gotten any sort of blunt trauma from. Barring smacking its head on the lid somehow.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/663422124760760331/1089586276895821954/IMG_1127.jpg

(it's in the dish again because I'm assuming natural state no longer matters on dead fish.)
Agh. I hadn't realized the gill cover was partially eroded.

How did it get this bad, this fast? It ate like a champ yesterday, and the glimpses I saw of the wound while it was eating looked improved from Friday. Nowhere near like it was going to be missing bone in 24 hours.

 

[threebuoys]

Sorry for your loss, hard to figure.

 

[Tired]

Is this the normal progression speed of something like a secondary infection?

I'm trying to figure out if I missed seeing something that would have warned me he was about to go from healthy to having his skull eaten into. I feel awful; I thought he was recovering fine. If I ****ed up and there was something I could have done to prevent this, I want to know.

Also, is there a way to un-tag this thread, since it's no longer an emergency?

 

[threebuoys]

Based on your comments, this event occurred over maybe 12 hours max? That is extremely quick and why I asked some of the questions and offered suggestions about photos. Catastrophic injury is a possibility, but not obvious in what you've shared . An illness such as velvet can progress quickly, but you should have noticed abnormalities last night. Very rapid breathing for example is a common symptom. Toxic water can progress quickly but would have affected your other fish too.

 

[Tired]

The damsel was eating fine yesterday morning, and was out and about being active for pretty much all of yesterday. So, yes, something like 12 hours. From what I saw yesterday morning, the wound looked about the same as it had Friday, maybe a little less red.

I know respiratory rate can be important to diagnosis, but all I can tell you there is that, if I had tried to count out loud, I would have struggled to say any of the two-syllable numbers (even as fast as I can physically speak) before it was time to count the next breath.

I don't know of any way the damsel could have injured itself. There are no moving parts in the tank, and nowhere it could fit enough of its head to have even lightly scraped up that much of itself, let alone skinned part of its body and ripped off a piece of gill plate. The dottyback is very small, about an inch, so even if it went murderous I don't think it has the capability to do anything like this.

Does this look like something that Kanaplex could have helped with?
I chose not to treat this fish with any medication because antibiotics can be hard on the body, and because I thought that, if it did develop a secondary infection it needed help with, the progression would be slow enough for me to catch it.
Now, obviously that wasn't the right choice to make with this particular fish- believe me, I can see that, and I feel absolutely awful. My question is: should I have expected this to be a possibility? Was I at least somewhat reasonable in thinking that any complications would show up slower than this?
Basically: is this speed of progression common at all, or is it the equivalent of when you hear about someone getting a papercut and winding up with septic shock? My approach to my /own/ "hm, that looks a bit inflamed" wounds is to keep an eye on 'em and go to the doctor if they get worse, and I'd like to think that's reasonable in most circumstances, but- does it not work the same for fish?

 

[vetteguy53081]

CORRECTION: it hasn't stopped breathing, but it is breathing very slowly. Seems not to be conscious.

Possibly urgent- normal injury progression on damselfish, or sore?

I noticed this yesterday, and assumed it was a scrape. There's a spot in this temporary tank where it could have shoved its head into a gap between two shells, gotten stuck, and hurt itself yanking back out, which would explain the raised scales. Is this what we would expect a scrape to look...

www.reef2reef.com

Damselfish that appeared to be slightly injured seemed fine yesterday, and is not today.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/663422124760760331/1089570617222774916/IMG_1122.jpg

I found it lying on the bottom, breathing harder than I've ever seen a fish this size breathe. It had enough strength to fight being caught, but that's it.

I'm assuming that the chance of this fish recovering is slim to none, and it's obviously in severe distress. I am therefore actively in the process of euthanizing it with clove oil, which should hopefully provide an analgesic effect. That is, however, a relatively slow process. If there's a /good/ hope of it recovering, I can take it out. I say good hope because I'm not going to make it die of whatever's going on internally for a 5% chance that it might not die.

Also: there's a dottyback in the same tank with it. What should I do to make sure whatever this is doesn't infect the dottyback, and how concerned do I need to be that I may have cross-contaminated the pair of clownfish in the other tank next door? None have been through QT and medication, so I haven't been bothering with not sharing tools; I assume they just all have dormant ich.

This appears much as injury but also one that has become infected. Treatment will be needed in quarantine using either seachem Kanaplex or maracyn 2 with added aeration via air stone.
Other which works slower would be Ruby Rally pro

 

[threebuoys]

As quickly as this fish passed, unless symptoms were missed and he had been ailing much longer, I don't believe you could have saved him.

If rapid breathing had been present for a couple of days instead of less than 12 hours, velvet may have been the culprit. That would have required an aggressive copper treatment in QT.

If the cause of death was injury, you would not be able to help. So don't punish yourself too much. Just always be observant for conditions that don't ap[pear normal as you did in this case, and have medications on hand. I do recommend our QT protocol. That protocol addresses the 3 most likely killers that new fish may carry.....ich, velvet, and flukes.

 

[Tired]

Okay, that's good to know. Thank you for the general help.

I spent awhile watching him the first couple days after that initial little scrape, and I didn't see anything that looked amiss; no clamped fins, no scratching, no rapid breathing. A little timid, but came out regularly to look around, came up to the front of the glass to stare at the cat, everything I'd expect a healthy fish to do. Seemed healthy and curious.

The dottyback will be going through the recommended QT protocol- this is a temporary (fully cycled) holding tank. I was looking at getting a whitespotted pygmy filefish, and the plan was to wait until I got that fish in, then medicate it and the others in one batch. I didn't want to try dealing with having a fish actively in QT while others were in observation- I don't have enough space to keep all three tanks (including my display) all 10 feet apart.