Harlequin Rasbora sick?

[kadoxu]

Hi,

I picked up some new fish this weekend, but things didn't go as smoothly as I wanted. While I was doing an acclimatization, 3 Harlequin Rasboras jumped out of the container to the ground (about a 1 meter fall).
Luckily enough, my partner saw them struggling and called me right away. I put them back in the container again, but one of them (the bigger one) seemed almost dead, almost floating on it's side, so I put him on a net an placed him in front of my tank's filter output for about half an hour to try and force some water flow through the gills. After that he was a bit shaken up and hidding a bit, but has started feeding and also joined the remaining harlequins.

But today I noticed something wrong with one of the Harlequins (not sure if it's the same one). It seems to be gasping all the time and has something on his side that I can't really say if it's a disease or a concussion from the fall.

 

[zozo]

Looks like an Ulcer,
http://www.fbas.co.uk/Ulcers.html

 

[kadoxu]

Looks like an Ulcer,
http://www.fbas.co.uk/Ulcers.html

Should I look for bath treatments or treat the whole tank?

 

[zozo]

I only kinda recognized the damage as an ulcer.. And if the fish is breeding heavy also is a sign it is in a severly stressed condition. i Fortunately i have no personal experience with treatment and what works best. So unfortunately i can only refer to textbook information such as the site i linked to. Sorry.. 🙁 🙂

And as the author of this website already states, the bacteria causing the ulcer is commonly present in each tank. Healthy fish get not affected by it and a (skin) damaged fish is the most likely victim to catch it. Logicaly, which is most difficult with this symptom is how did the fish got damaged in the first place. As said it can be netting damage, or maybe as you suspect it could be the fish that fell.. Who knows?

Personaly i'm not a fan of medicating a whole tank because of one fish in bad condition.. I would rather remove the fish and keep a close eye on the rest if more or all are infected it will show pretty soon. Sounds maybe cruel, but such a tiny creature, so severly damaged and already showing physicaly stress symptoms, wont likely make it anyway. Beter treat in quarantine if you want to treat and already have other healthy fish for longer in the same tank. Trying to treat it is a noble thing, but likely with disapointing relults.

It's not uncommen in this hobby that a number of newly bought fish don't react positive to the stress caused by the whole hassle, from river to wholesaler, to retailer, to home aquarium.. Its quite an ordeal for them to go through, for which there isn't a medicene invented yet. So if you only lose 1 you can consider yourself lucky. 1 or more newly bought fish getting sick and or just die in the first 2 to 3 weeks is for me personaly no reason for alarm and not loosing one is more a rarety. The dark cruel side of our hobby.. Wink, we need to learn to live with.

 

[alto]

When treating sick fish
1) minimal stress - re immune suppression in fish so isolating a shoaling fish to a hospital tank can be the beginning of the end
2) optimum water quality - including dissolved oxygen levels so lower CO2 to low - moderate
3) dim lighting
4) little if any food re water quality, also fish digestive system may be slowed by illness


A recovering fish will improve significantly each day, if you don't observe much change, then "whatever" is not responding to your offered tx - often it's mostly the supportive care that allow fish to fight off infection

In this instance I'd go with daily water changes, slightly lowered temperatures (more dissolved oxygen, some reduction in bacterial growth rates), perhaps an additive such as Seachem StressGuard & hope 😉

It's quite possible this is related to the fall - such an event, even netting/handling, causes scale/skin damage

Sometimes it's best just to float bag 10-12 min to adjust temperature, then quickly net & release fish into the dimmed tank; allow fish a couple hours (or overnight) to sort themselves in the tank before turning on lights or hovering about tank. Feed the next day

While slow acclimations are good in theory, in practise they are often very stressful events for fish - unless previous conditions are very different than tank, I just do the quick release method

 

[zozo]

What absolutely is very healthy for fish is life food, like daphnia, mosquito larva etc. It's not only healthy as only food it also a healthy behaivor stimulant.
Not only for the damaged one, also for the rest.. Fish getting a regular diet of life food, get a beter color much sooner in a mater of days instead of weeks, faster weight gain, more natural way of feeding. When i intruduce new fish, an hour later a scoop of life daphnia goes in and always see them happily hunt their @ss off straight away. They color up in days.. 🙂 The issue still is a bit a controversial debate, see the topic "Imagine to be a pet fish" but imho they feel much sooner at home (happier) if you bring them as soon as possible to a natural as possible invironment. Life food is a must for this, safest is aquatic life food which in nature occure in their invironment, daphnia, mosquitos and crustaceans are about cosmopolitins. Alternative life food as tubifex and several kinds of other worms which are not truly free swimming aquatics need some recourcing per fish sp. E.g. Darios are predators absolute in need of life food, but rather do not feed them tubifex the can get issues with this. 🙂

 

[kadoxu]

Thanks for the help.

I bough the fish from a cheap ebay store, but I asked to pick the fish up instead of having them delivered to avoid stressing them more than necessary. So I drove 1 hour each way to pick them up. I had the bags floating in the tank for almost 30 minutes before acclimatizing and I knew I could just add them to the tank after that, but I though it would be better, since I always have such a huge success acclimatizing shrimp... never occurred to me that I was stressing them even more. Lesson learned!

Rachel O'leary's youtube channel allowed me to learn a lot in the last few weeks, specially a video when she showed the best procedure after a shipment of fish got lost for a few days. It taught me what to do, and most likely saved the almost dying jumper, and also that good quality of water is almost always the best treatment, so I was going to increase the amount of water changes for a while anyway.

As for live food, I've been planning to start something, but I'm still on research mode. At the moment I only have frozen Bloodworms, Daphnia and Cyclops that I feed at least once a week. I always put the food above the outflow lily pipe, so it gets blown away with the current and forces the fish to run for it... it's the best I could come with until I get real live foods. And I have to say, I was kinda impressed with how fast the Harlequins were chasing it.

I don't really think the little guy is going to recover, but I won't let it go without trying first. I'll reduce temperature, lights, and CO2 for a few days, do daily water changes, and I'll get some Seachem ParaGuard (since it has the same contents of StressGuard and it's easier to find).

 

[alto]

Seachem ParaGuard & StressGuard are completely different

PG is on their medication page
I really like PG for treating Bettas that arrive in poor condition but wouldn't use it to treat the fish above

 

[zozo]

Very much of what we buy is still wild caught in nature and if you happen to get a wild batch about adult sized fish, there is no way of knowing its age. Adult sized it could be 1 year old or nearing the end of its maximum age.

Rachel O'leary's youtube channel allowed me to learn a lot in the last few weeks, specially a video when she showed the best procedure after a shipment of fish got lost for a few days

Yes she is indeed very informative and a lovely personality.. It is indeed best to get the fish as soon as possible out of that bag and out of that water. And imagine fish probably do as we do, let go stool when we are in absolute fear of our life. In fear they probably are when netted, put in a bag with maybe 0.5 litre and have a dark shakey hour ride home. We would sh*t in our pants, they do it in the invironment they need to breath from. That little temp difference is the least of their conserns. If they can take the 5 degree differnce from a water change, they can take it from bag to aquarium.

The way i do it, is fill a bucket with aquarium water the same amount as is in the bag. Cut the bag and empty in that bucket. After a few minutes add some more aquarium water. Wait a few minutes more net them out and put in the tank. In the tank they have hidding places and uselay all shoot into the plants straight away. I give them some rest there and 15 minutes later i add some life food. In my case i have daphnia in the cellar during the winter and in the garden during the summer. Anyway, the reaction of the other fish to the life food triggers them always to come out of hiding and hunt daphnia too. To me it looks like their hunting instinc and probably their empty stomag destracts their tiny brains from the previous endured stress.

It's pretty normal if you get new fish and see one in bad shape within a day, to think that you did something wrong.. And again it might sound very cruel, but it more likely is a weak one you can't do much about. And weak ones, sorry, but these you do not want to have anyway. If you would have predators they would be eaten shortly. If you do not have, they probably die a slow agenizing death. This you do not have to reflect on yourself, them beeing weak is not your mistake if you make sure you transfer them into a healthy mature tank.

From the 12 different species of fish i bought the last 2,5 years only 2 sp. are still in the same numbers i bought them in. From the others i all lost a few weak ones within the first 3 weeks.. I'm pretty sure it is not me and not the tanks, because the tank and the others that live and are strong are vibrantly healthy. Even had one sp. 7 of them bought as a bargain, special offer in the LFS.. All died within 6 weeks all had some mystirious defect, hence the bargain, likely the wholesaler thinking, this is a bad batch need to get rid of it as soon as possible. "Discount time!." Than it's the retailers customers problem. If it aint a obvious internal or external parasite than treating is a role of the dice anyway.. As cruel as it might sound, but beter to get rid of the weak ones.. In the low tech i have a shool of barbs, preying on the weak nano fish, that's also what happens in nature. It contributes to a healthy tank.
If you do not have that, you should play for predator/god.. 😉

It's a strange phenomenon, that aquarium keeping.. Having all those fish enduring all that stress and maltreatment before they end up in someones tank. And this person getting emotinaly overconcerned, trying to bend naturers laws. If you want to play for mother nature, you might be beter off with sometimes beeing as cruel as she is..

 

[kadoxu]

Seachem ParaGuard & StressGuard are completely different

I would think so too, but according the their customers support:

StressGuard and ParaGuard have the same 3 types of medications. There is a disinfectant, a protein active collide, and a dye. They are just in different ratios in these two products. The ParaGuard has a heavier amount of disinfectant whereas the StressGuard has more protein active collide.

 

[alto]

That last ingredient - the protein active colloid - is really the ingredient of interest in this situation as it's going to "stick & coat" that area of damage on fish with skin abrasions, this will help them maintain their internal electrolyte balance as open woulnds like that are metabolically costly for fish

The dye & disinfectant parts are active against external parasites & some external bacterial infections (think Bettas with clumping fins) - I find that ParaGuard is much better tolerated than some other medications that are marketed for similar conditions