wrasses and prazi pro again

[pomoev]

Want to share my terrible experience with quarantining wrasses.

2 days ago I got 4 wrasses from an LFS: a leopard wrasse, a checkerboard wrasse, a yellow coris wrasse and a melanurus wrasse.

I know in the store they were kept at lower salinity (~1.019 they said) with some prophylactic level of copper. I got them home, acclimated to the regular salinity over ~30 minutes in 3 doses of freshly mixed saltwater eventually doubling the volume of water in the container. Then I placed them in a freshly started non-medicated 20g QT with a heater, air stone, ammonia alert and a small wavemaker. They were stressed but all active at first. The next day I noticed the leopard wrasse started rolling over sideways and was breathing heavily. I suspected flukes as I read tons of stories how they are susceptible to those parasites. I gave him a 5 minute freshwater bath in a plastic container of RO/DI water with matching temperature. Then I released the fish back into the QT and added 4ml of prazi pro per 20 gallon tank (it wasn't full, so I did 4ml instead of 5).
In about 2 hours the leopard wrasse got way worse, started rolling over more. I thought it was prazi pro sensitivity and put him into another QT with non-medicated water. In the morning he was dead.
In the first tank medicated with prazi pro the melanurus and the checkerboard were lethargic, and the yellow coris was lying on his back barely breathing. I moved the yellow coris into the second non-medicated QT tank where he died in an hour.

Now I moved the remaining melanurus and checkerboard wrasses to the non-medicated tank and they are not looking good. The weird thing that may give some signal is they both are using only one of their pectoral fins. Attaching a video of them now.


Any thoughts how I can save them?

And generally, what the heck is going on? Is it prazi pro? Or is it flukes that were suppressed by the hiposalinity in the store but got active once placed into a regular saltwater?

 

[SaltyT]

I know in the store they were kept at lower salinity (~1.019 they said) with some prophylactic level of copper. I got them home, acclimated to the regular salinity over ~30 minutes in 3 doses of freshly mixed saltwater eventually doubling the volume of water in the container.

You brought their salinity up in only 30 minutes?

 

[pomoev]

You brought their salinity up in only 30 minutes?

Yes, I poured all the fish with the store water into a bucket (resulted in about 2g total) and then added ~2.5g of my own saltwater in 3 steps over 30 minutes.

The first night all looked fine and were active.

 

[pomoev]

I put a bowl of sand into the QT and they immediately buried into it. Maybe it'll relief them from stress a bit.

 

[Tamberav]

That salinity increase is too fast imo. When I go from 1.018 to 1.026 I do it over a number of hours. Some sources say no more than 2ppm per day but I found I can go up as long as I do it slow enough. Maybe 1 drip per second.

If they are going into a QT tank, then just match the salinity of the QT to whatever the fish are and bring it up through evaporation. No reason to raise it if going to a QT tank... just add more RODI to the QT to bring the salinity down to the fish.

I haven't had any issues with wrasse and praiz pro (as long as it is dosed as directed) and I have many wrasse.

Probably not much you can do at this point, maybe a methylene blue bath.

 

[SaltyT]

Agree, best practice is to match your QT to the salinity the fish are in, not the other way around. You dehydrated your fish with such a drastic salinity increase. I have also run dozens of wrasses thru Prazipro with no issues when dosed properly with lots of aeration. I don't think Prazipro caused what happened. Sorry for your losses

 

[pomoev]

Is it worth trying to lower the salinity for the remaining fish?

 

[pomoev]

Agree, best practice is to match your QT to the salinity the fish are in, not the other way around. You dehydrated your fish with such a drastic salinity increase. I have also run dozens of wrasses thru Prazipro with no issues when dosed properly with lots of aeration. I don't think Prazipro caused what happened. Sorry for your losses

There are tons of sources even on this forum arguing that acclimation longer than 30minutes is harmful.
Also, I believe most stores in the area keep fish at lower salinity, and I've never had any problems with 30-40minutes acclimation before releasing the fish directly into the display tank with 1.026. Although I haven't had much experience with wrasses...

That salinity increase is too fast imo. When I go from 1.018 to 1.026 I do it over a number of hours. Some sources say no more than 2ppm per day but I found I can go up as long as I do it slow enough. Maybe 1 drip per second.

If they are going into a QT tank, then just match the salinity of the QT to whatever the fish are and bring it up through evaporation. No reason to raise it if going to a QT tank... just add more RODI to the QT to bring the salinity down to the fish.

I haven't had any issues with wrasse and praiz pro (as long as it is dosed as directed) and I have many wrasse.

Probably not much you can do at this point, maybe a methylene blue bath.

I believe most of the stores in the area keep fish at low salinity, and I've never had any issues with my simple acclimation.
Even HumbleFish dripping acclimation protocol reads "Drip acclimate until the water in the bucket is within .001 SG of the receiving tank. Ideally, this should only take around 30 minutes."

Are wrasses known to be sensitive to salinity swings?

 

[Tamberav]

There are tons of sources even on this forum arguing that acclimation longer than 30minutes is harmful.
Also, I believe most stores in the area keep fish at lower salinity, and I've never had any problems with 30-40minutes acclimation before releasing the fish directly into the display tank with 1.026. Although I haven't had much experience with wrasses...

I believe most of the stores in the area keep fish at low salinity, and I've never had any issues with my simple acclimation.
Even HumbleFish dripping acclimation protocol reads "Drip acclimate until the water in the bucket is within .001 SG of the receiving tank. Ideally, this should only take around 30 minutes."

Are wrasses known to be sensitive to salinity swings?

That’s a very large swing. I don’t drip usually as it’s faster to get the QT matched to the fish and less stressful and then just float and release.

If they were not shipped fish and bought at a LFS then they were not in the bag overnight shipping and dripping is less of an issue. You don’t want them in the bag long if shipped due to rising pH which makes ammonia more toxic.

Wrasses are more sensitive fish over all but I would never bring any fish up that fast. His post does say fish don’t tolerate going up as fast as down.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

That salinity increase is too fast imo. When I go from 1.018 to 1.026 I do it over a number of hours. Some sources say no more than 2ppm per day but I found I can go up as long as I do it slow enough. Maybe 1 drip per second.

If they are going into a QT tank, then just match the salinity of the QT to whatever the fish are and bring it up through evaporation. No reason to raise it if going to a QT tank... just add more RODI to the QT to bring the salinity down to the fish.

I haven't had any issues with wrasse and praiz pro (as long as it is dosed as directed) and I have many wrasse.

Probably not much you can do at this point, maybe a methylene blue bath.

When I take fish from 10.18 to 1.026 I do that over DAYS - 3 days to be safe. This works out to be about 2.5 ppm per day, done in stages, 2 changes a day usually. In a pinch, I think it could be done in two days, but I would use three stages per day in that case.

You can always drop salinity much faster, but raising too fast causes the fish to dehydrate and sometimes die the next day.

Please be careful with drip acclimation - at one drop per second, that is only 3 ml per minute. If the fish is in say, 1000 ml of water, it will take 5 1/2 hours just to change the salinity by 50%. I did the math years ago and as I recall, it will take 96 hours to reach 95% equilibrium at 1 drop per second. I prefer to move the fish to their own tank and adjust the salinity in situ. If I can't do that, I'll use flow acclimation, with heat and aeration.

Jay

 

[Tamberav]

When I take fish from 10.18 to 1.026 I do that over DAYS - 3 days to be safe. This works out to be about 2.5 ppm per day, done in stages, 2 changes a day usually. In a pinch, I think it could be done in two days, but I would use three stages per day in that case.

You can always drop salinity much faster, but raising too fast causes the fish to dehydrate and sometimes die the next day.

Please be careful with drip acclimation - at one drop per second, that is only 3 ml per minute. If the fish is in say, 1000 ml of water, it will take 5 1/2 hours just to change the salinity by 50%. I did the math years ago and as I recall, it will take 96 hours to reach 95% equilibrium at 1 drop per second. I prefer to move the fish to their own tank and adjust the salinity in situ. If I can't do that, I'll use flow acclimation, with heat and aeration.

Jay

Your way is better and often I do it this way. I put the fish in QT and let it raise through evap. My most recent fish I raised was two radiant wrasses around the time of this post from 1.018 and they are still with me now. I think it was around 6 hour drip. These fish were not shipped.

I will say my LFS gets them in a 1.018 and puts them in their tanks at 1.025 and all they do is cut holes in the bag and float. Not sure how that works for them tbh but I don't see excessive losses. I picked the fish up still in the bag so they were still 1.018.

 

[vtecintegra]

Beating a dead horse, but I always sample the water in the bag and match the QT to it. Then raise QT .001 per day to where I want it.

 

[pomoev]

Thanks everyone for more replies.

1. Update: all wrasses died within 2 days. I have never had such experience in my life, and I feel terrible about it.

2. The standard recommendation from local fish stores was to do a 30 minutes acclimation to bring the salinity in the bucket halfway to what's in the tank, and none of them ever mentioned 2ppm/day. I don't know why, but I really don't believe they would recommend 30min acclimation if it caused 100% death rate in any type of fish.

3. Convinced by the community that salinity was the issue, a few days later I got another yellow coris wrasse, a diamond goby and a midas blenny from another fish store. I did a 30% water change in the same QT tank and lowered the salinity to 1.024, but it still likely had traces of PraziPro that was used in that tank 3 days ago (I can't find it now, but I'm pretty sure I read that PraziPro becomes inactive after 48-72 hours in the water).
I double checked the salinity in the bag and it was ~1.023, very close to the salinity of QT. I did a 30 minute acclimation and released the fish into the QT.
Exactly the same happened to that new wrasse, he was dead in 2 days with all the same symptoms. The blenny and the goby are doing well.

My current conclusions are: the salinity increase could contribute to the issue, but it wasn't the root cause.

 

[pomoev]

I thought it would be good to update my old post with my later experience.

I have successfully quarantined a six-line, a red coris and a melanurus wrasses, used prazi with all of them without any issues. I think the key difference was that l started providing them some hiding spots: a mound of sand and a piece of rock. Melanurus and red coris would burry themselves in the sand when stressed, and the six-line would build a cocoon and kindof attached himself to the rock.

So I believe prazi had nothing to do with those unfortunate wrasse deaths, it was likely because of stress.