paralyzed fish?? i need help bad!!

[angry gary]

hello everyone,
i am new to this site. i was advised to come here to try to find help wit ha serious fish problem i have. i have lost four fish in the past month. a yellow and purple tang, one of my mated pair of orangespotted gobies(and the other is ailing as i type.) and a maroon clown. and this evening my small hippo tang is starting to show the same symptoms.
all the fish but the hippo have shown this at about the second to third week in my tank. they all start out excellent. they acclimate fine and eat the first day in the tank. all have had excellent coloration. no sign of stress, no ich. they ear like pigs and no fighting. then all of a sudden one day they will act as if they have paralysis. they cannot\do not use their tail. they only use there pectoral fins. they are easily swept away in tank currents. the odd thing is all of them except for the yellow tang would still eat when food was present. after a couple days they will die. my purple tang look as splendid the day he died as the day i brought him home.
i have been keeping saltwater fish and soft coral tanks for almost twenty years now. i got away from it for a few years .i got back into again this past june.
my tank is a reef ready 180 with a 75 gallon sump. i run an asm skimmer and have 200 lbs. fiji rock. and 3 seio 1500 for circulation. i have a fluidized sand bed filter runningalso.( i have always run one,i know they probably do not offer much help but i have my little idiosynchrosies and superstitions!) i have a small refugium in the sump with chaeto and is lit 24\7. the tank is grounded also
the tank has been running since august. i had a yellow tail damsel in it from day one and added the yellow tang and the maroon clown in the end of sept.. added the purple tang two weeks later. the hippo and a mated pair of gobies a couple weeks later. the tank has 4 cleaner shrimp and assorted xenias and tree corals. i feed once every other day with mysis shrimp and frozen brine and some formula one pellets. and occasionally throw in some cyclop-eeze. i have clips of nori available also. they all ate like pigs
my water parameters are as follows:
amm. and nitrites=0
nitrates=10
ph=8.2
salinity=1.026
temp= 80.5

i do top offs and water changes using ro\di water and instant ocean salt.
any other info you need please ask.

i am desperate here. i have lost four fish now going on five in a month. i have never lost 5 fish in year before. i am panicking big time.PLEASE HELP!!!

THANK YOU
gary

 

[steve-s]

Gary, Welcome to RF.

Odd happenings to say the least. A few questions though to help narrow down possibilities.

Do you quarantine? If so how long?
Are any kind of treatments performed prior to adding new fish?
Are these fish purchased from various sources or the same?
How do you acclimate new fish?
Do you use carbon or a skimmer?
How often are water chnages done, what amount?
Are there any anemone/cndarians in the tank?
Was the tank or any of the equipment purchased used? Was any of it sterilized prior to use? If so how?

 

[matts125]

Wow Steve good Job of covering all the basis here.
I am sure if there is help to be given you will succeed and find the problem..


Matt

 

[angry gary]

1)i do not quarantine. i never have. i guess i should but have never had problems in the past.
2)i do not add any treatments to my tank at all at any time
3)the two tangs came from the same place but the others came from a different store. i know that one store imports their own fish while the other probably uses a distributor. i can say 100% that they do not use the same source.
4) i acclimate my fish the same way i have for years.. float bag to equalize temp. put new fish and the shipping water in a container. add small amounts over the course of an hour to an hour and a half. i take out water as i add it. i dip the fish out with a net then add him to my tank.
5)i have a few bags of chemi-pure in my baffle in the sump. i run a asm g4x skimmer. no other filtration. oh except for a rainbow lifegard fluidized bed.
6)water changes have been once a month. about 50 gal.s, approx 20-25%
7)there are no anemones in the tank. i do not know what cndarians are. i have two xenias and a couple capnellas.
8)all equipment was purchased new. i never heard of sterilizing. it makes sense but i have never done it.



i have been talking to the guy who helped me get started many many years ago and he was baffled. i have had great luck in the past years keeping fish. he always tells me that i must be doing something right. i would take almost dead fish home from a local petco store. they would either flush a system with freshwater or do some other bonehead move. i rarely lost any of those fish. i have always followed the same routine i always used.
my thinking has it got to be something getting into the tank. the tank is built into a wall. the back\exposed dide is in my furnace room. i have had a 125 in this spot for a couple years with no incident.

steve i am really grateful for your assistance. i was told to try to find you specifically. no pressure here guy!!

thank you,
gary allison

 

[matts125]

cndarians are a type of hydroid with a very potent sting. this may very well be a good culprit for this problem you are having..

lets see what Steve has to say..

Matt

 

[angry gary]

what is a hydroid?

AG

 

[andrew m.]

cnidarians are anemones, just means that they have stinging cells called nematocysts (or cnidocytes i think is another name for them). from what i read, hydroids are a class of the phylum cnidaria. i think all cnidaria are radially symetric, like anemones, their mouths are also their anus.

 

[Damsel13]

Isn't a jellyfish a type of cnidaria? And I think it might be pronounced Nedaria? Does anyone know?

 

[andrew m.]

"Isn't a jellyfish a type of cnidaria?" im pretty sure, depending on the type of jellyfish there are different classes under cnidaria

 

[steve-s]

The most likely culprits would have been acclimation, stinging organisms, water contamination, electrical malfunctions, parasite or a Mycobacterium infection. Given the soft corals/inverts do not seem to be an issue we can look past the electrical and water poisoning possibilities. There are no aggressive cnidarians so that leaves acclimation, parasite or infection. Since this has also affected pre-existing fish, acclimation would not really be an immediate concern although your technique is not that good. That leaves us with parasitic or bacterial/viral. If all the fish have passed in a relatively short time, parasitic would be the most likely candidate. Either A. ocellatum or B. hostilis would be your two most likely parasites although not forgone. If some fish are remaining without ill appearance, I would lean towards the Mycobacterium.

What fish are remaining and how is their appearance?

i have been keeping saltwater fish and soft coral tanks for almost twenty years now. i got away from it for a few years .i got back into again this past june.

This is the part that has me thinking bacteria. If the tanks where not in use for any length of time or used for something different (reptiles especially) and not bleached prior to when they where set up anew, a Mycobacterium infection would be the most likely culprit.

Gary, and feedback on that?

 

[angry gary]

steve,
thanks for the help. the fish i have presently that are not affected are a yellow tail blue damsel, a spotted hawk and a hippo tang. the hippo shown the symptoms for a day and now appears to be okay. he is the only one that has come back from it.
also my statement about getting in was a bit misleading. i bought all new equipment when i got back in. i knew about cleaning and bleaching aquariums when used for reptiles. i have done that in the past.
i guess i will be setting up a QT now. i have a 30 tall laying around,( i will bleach clean it!).
i tried to lok up the cdnarian hydroid with no luck. i found a pic of hydroid as a milky white type creature. i have tiny things in my live rock that has a distant resemblance to them.
one thing i did notice is this time my live rock had alot of creatures and flora on it that i had not had before. i "cooked" it for a month and still had alot of things on it. it still has a growth explosion of what appears to be sargassum. the tangs won't touch it. the idea of something in the rock stinging them had me thinking. but i figured the stress of being stung would affect their coloration and general appearance.

thanks again,
gary

 

[steve-s]

I would hold off on any new additions for the next 6-8 weeks, fish or otherwise. Focus on keeping your tank as top notch as possible and stress to a minimum. Be sure all the fish get their specific beneficial foods along with liquid vitamins and HUFA's. It is possible that whatever caused the problem has passed or the fish unaffected where not immune compromised. This may be a short lived experience.

Please definitely set up a QT. If things turn sour you will have something ready. If not, you'll have a cycled QT for new additions.

As for Cnidarians, don't kill yourself looking for anything specific. A Cnidarian is basically something that can sting, it is a massive phylum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnidaria

I would instead make note of your fish's behavior if/when it changes in a specific area of the tank. Darting, color fading, aggressive fin expansion and so on. That may help narrow down something. You might also want to look at the tank with a red light an hour or so after lights out.

 

[morgan]

hmm these fish could of been cyanide caught or have been kept in copper treat ments at fish stores for to long causing liver faliuer
it is quiet possilbe to have a small warhata/beadlet anenome i have seen one take a copperbanned that was very stressed and sick after removing the fish from the anenome it was paroed for 2 minutes on its side slowy regained councines and died later that night
sum anenenomes pack powerfull stings

 

[angry gary]

is it possible that i have a creature of sorts in my rock doing this? would a mantis shrimp be capable of this? if a creature is doing this what kind could it be?
gary

 

[steve-s]

Anythings possible. There are a few sessile/motile inverts that would fit that bill. Bartholomea annulata, pseudocorynactis, hydroids and so on. I would rule out crustaceans, they're not to likely to leave the carcass intact/unblemished.

 

[angry gary]

steve,
can you give me a brief description of these inverts. the day we set the tank up wit hthe live rock in it we saw something that was maybe 2\3 the diameter of a golf ball. it was basically round in shape. it was what appeared to be hinged like a mussel. but the hinge was at the top. it moved similar to a snail. with the same type of foot as a snail. but its locomotion was different. it would open then contract and this is what seemed to propel it along. it would move maybe an inch with each contraction and each contraction was maybe 5-10 seconds apart. it was moving inwards towards the crevices so i never saw the "front" of it. i went to get a camera to get a picture but when i returned it was gone. i was thinking it was cool and never gave it a second thought.
my yellow tang had what i first thought to be two ich spots on it before it went down. but the spots were on both sides at the same place. almost like it had a hole in its fins. but the next day they were gone. i really never considered this as part of this problem but now i do not know what to think..
i painted the back of my tank and i think i am going to scrape off the paint in spots to get a better view from behind. i got a flashlight with a red lens so tonight i start my stake out. i swear to god if i find it to be a critter of some sort i promise to capture him alive, prepare the steamer and i am going to steam him like a maryland blue crab and eat the little bastard!!

angry gary

 

[angry gary]

well i spent about an half hour looking at the tank with a red light. i found about a dozen opaque white worms. they appeared to be attached or embedded in holes in the rock. they would stretch out and feel around their area. they would stretch out maybe 2 to 3 inches. . they are about as thick as pencil lead and when they stretched out they are almost thread thickness. i watched one for about 5 minutes and it never came completely out. when i hit it with a regular light it darted back into its hole.
i do not have a good camera to get a picture but i can probably pull out one of the rocks and dig the little bugger out of its hole.
could this be the fish paralyzer?
another side note. i realized my hippo no longer wedges himself into the rocks like he once did. i have had several over the years and they all wedged themselves at night. he will kind of lay up against a rock out in the open. very strange.

gary

 

[steve-s]

The crawly thing sounds like a Stometella varia. Looks like a miniature abalone of sorts. The worms sounds like a peanut worm but hard to tell without an image. Were there any marks, bristles/setae or "antennae"?

There are definitely worm predators that may attack fish but LeslieH would be the best person to ask that.

As for the tang, just about anything could make it change locations. Something in or outside the tank. Anything from ambient lighting, corals, flow shift or a nuisance neighbor.

<<Bartholomea>>
<<Pseudocorynactis>>
<<Hydroids>>

 

[angry gary]

the worms have no markings or appendages, antennae or bristles.the end of it does sort of have a mouth. it does not go to point like a worm has.

angry gary

 

[steve-s]

Sounds like a peanut worm, they're harmless.