What to try with clownfish who wouldn't eat after flukes?

[Adrian_]

In short: patient is a male tomato clownfish who is solo in a 128L tank for the last 5 years or so. Have him for 9 years and he was already adult when I got him. Tank is well established, no water problems. After I was out of the country for 3 weeks during April found him extremely weak (person left in charge of the tank is old and didn't noticed that he was talking the pellets but not eating them) . I managed to recover him completely using mysis. About a week ago I noticed he didn't came out for food, but weather was really bad and atmospheric pressure was swinging crazy so I blamed it on that. 5 days ago he showed up in a frenzy, hitting rocks, with one eye clouded and bulging, the body discoloured and a couple of almost white vertical stripes. After he calmed down the body color recovered partially and the vertical white strips disappeared. (they were due to stress as far as I can tell). But now he was gilling very heavily and was hanging on the bottom or at best swimming in the current slightly above some rocks.

Based on everything I know I gave him saturday a FW dip (5 mins in a liter of RO water with 3 drops of methylene blue and a splash of aquarium water). This clearly improved his condition as he now swims slowly around the tank, having no problem navigating around and the breathing is somehow slower but not normal. Checked the container but found only 3-4 tiny white "could be worms" maybe 1mm long and very thin. Another one was hanging back out of his left gill when I returned him to the tank.
Yesterday I dosed prazi to about 2.5mg/ liter of aquarium water. Poor guy is not worse but not better either, still swimming slowly around the tank and not caring if a mysis floats right in front of him. It is worth mentioning that he appears to be sometimes slightly inclined on his left (maybe at 5 mins instead of 0 as looking at him from the front) His body color is now normal.

Any idea how can I make him take some food? The impression is that he only needs to do that in order to make a full recovery. As you can imagine I'm quite fond of the little fellow and would hate to see him slowly starve to death.
Thanks in advance for any suggestion.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

I don’t think that flukes would be the primary diagnosis here, unless you’ve recently added fish to the tank, and they also have symptoms.

I wonder if it is age related issues, made worse by a period of time without proper food? The items you saw in the dip may not have been flukes, a microscope is often needed to confirm flukes in dip water.
Jay

 

[Adrian_]

Hi Jay and thanks for the answer.

I was editing as you replied. There was also a small white thingy hanging back out of his left gill as I returned him to the tank from the FW dip. Also the FW dip clearly improved his condition, it was very obvious.

Haven't added anything since 2019 and that was a single hermit this is why I waited 2 days before giving him the FW dip. I suspect that some sort of parasite was historically present in the tank but got a hold of him over old age and the 3 weeks of famine.

 

[Adrian_]

There was also some white stringy poo after the fw dip, some is also present as I write this message.

 

[Adrian_]

I was thinking at lowering the tank temperature in the 22-23 Celsius interval (I have a chiller, can set it to 22 target so it kicks off at 23). The idea was to drop the temperature in the winter range for the Red Sea in order to lower his metabolism and buy him more time. Then after 2-3 days bump it at 24-25 Celsius and see if he starts feeding.

Other then that I'm out of ideas, can't force feed him...

 

[ClownWrangler]

Sounds more like nitrate poisoning, which can cause irreversible damage. What were the nitrates at when you returned from vacation? Do you have automatic top off, could the salinity have gone too high? Water parameters are the most likely culprit here with multiple symptoms like that and given the fish is not new unless you added something else to the tank recently.

 

[Adrian_]

Nitrates were like 15ppm, nothing shocking. Salinity was like 1.025.

Still not eating today, even with mysis soaked in garlic. I just gave him a 15 mins methylene blue bath (using aquarium water not RO). Within some 4L of water I used 3ml of 1% methylene blue (indications that I found on various websites said 1ml of 2.3% methylene blue in 1 gallon of water for 30 mins).
Took him out after 15 mins as concentration looked way too high (water was more like diluted ink) and his body was discolored due to stress.

As I put him in back the tank I could clearly see some stuff (2mm long) hanging out back from his gills and he was breathing VERY heavily. The things hanging out from the gills are now gone (hopefully it wasn't dead tissue) but he swims very odd and still has discoloration stress patches.
Sadly so far it looks like I did more harm then good this time, but I had to try, wasn't going to just watch him starve to death.

 

[Adrian_]

Well, a couple of hours later he looks WAY better, looks like the methylene blue actually helped him. Currently he swims level, has good buoyancy control, turns left and right and so on, has normal body color. Still gilling hard tho.
If he makes it trough the night will try again garlic soaked mysis tomorrow. If he still doesn't eat not sure what else to try, except for making a new batch of water and moving him to a QT to rule out any substance that may not show up on tests.

 

[Adrian_]

The culprit was found: defective refractometer. Asked my old relative who handled the tank in my absence if she did top off with RO and the answer was no. Tested with my refractometer again this morning it showed a not so bad 1.026 but at this point I borrowed another from a local aquarium shop and tested with that. Lo and behold, it was off the chart probably in the 1.033-1.034 range
I'd say the tank holds some 110L of water, how fast you would go down? Keep in mind the fish haven't eat anything in a week if not more so it's a quite urgent. Only have lots of LR, soft coals and CUC.
Please advise.
I dropped some 700ml RO in the back compartment as a first relief measure, poor clownfish is already breathing slower but...I was thinking at pouring 100ml RO every 30 mins.