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My pair of Oscars are a year old and have been healthy and interactive all this time. They come up and eat from my hand etc. Friday moring I though my female looked a little sluggish, but she ate and came up for conversation. When I came home from work, she had no skin AT ALL and no covering on her fins. She looked as if she had prepared herself to be skillet fried. She died saturday and noow my male is so depressed, I don't think he'll make it. Sunday morning my Jack Dempsey looked a little funny and was dead by night. My pet supply guy said he'd never seen anything like it: My pH is fine,; temp is fine; ammonia fine; haven't changed food either so I am stumped. I really miss her; she jumped and banged the lid of the aquarium if I walked by without talking to her. Does ANYONE know what happened and how I can prevent it from EVER happening again. PLEASE, I'm afraid my large male will be gone when I come home from work today.

Can you elaborate a little more on any appearant symptoms? It is hard to tell with the description you gave. Is their a milky type covering over him? To start with Treat with both Maracyn and Maracyn-2, do a 25% water change before hand and remove any carbon filters. The combination of these 2 antibitics will combat a wide variety of things and hopefully be strong enough to boot the problem and pervent anymore loss. Since you have already had 2 fish die though the disease may be to advanced to save him. I would also add aquarium salt to promote a proper electrolyte balence and a stress coat type medication to help protect him and relieve some of the stress. Let us know what happens.


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Candice

It sounds to me by your discription that it was a Costia infection. What happens in that is a white film appears on the fish which sloughs off and leaves a sore, red lesion. Though from all the pictures I saw of it, they never affected the entire fish like you discribe... though the description of it sounds right "..., sevre infection can lead to disintegration of the skin and bleeding". For treatment to prevent your other fish from becoming ill I would recomend raising your temp to 86-90 as this will kill all the remaining Costia necatrix flagellates in the water. if the fish begins to look stressed lower the temp to as close to 86 as it can stand as this is the temp which will kill it. Also Methylene blue is effective in preventing it from spreading. I hope that helped, and I hope you dont lose your other oscar, I know losing a prized fish is very hard. Let us know how it turns out.

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Save the animals, eat a PETA member!

Adam

Originally posted by Adam:
It sounds to me by your discription that it was a Costia infection. What happens in that is a white film appears on the fish which sloughs off and leaves a sore, red lesion. Though from all the pictures I saw of it, they never affected the entire fish like you discribe... though the description of it sounds right "..., sevre infection can lead to disintegration of the skin and bleeding". For treatment to prevent your other fish from becoming ill I would recomend raising your temp to 86-90 as this will kill all the remaining Costia necatrix flagellates in the water. if the fish begins to look stressed lower the temp to as close to 86 as it can stand as this is the temp which will kill it. Also Methylene blue is effective in preventing it from spreading. I hope that helped, and I hope you dont lose your other oscar, I know losing a prized fish is very hard. Let us know how it turns out.

Thank you for replying so soon. I tried to reply to Candice too, but I think I used the wrong icon. She didn't have and milky film but was basically unresponsive the morning of the day she died. Her normal white and orange color seemed a little yellowish and she seemed off balance. My boy oscar tried to coax her to swim with him but she would only move about an inch or so at a time. When I came home, she looked prepared for the grocery store as in she was just meat. I took her out of the tank and she had no fight or attitude. She died about four hours later. My Jack Dempsey swam vertically for several hours before his skin disintegrated and he died much more quickly than she did. Now my boy Oscar is dying. I took him to the big bereavement tank at the aquarium guy's place to see if he would make a friend, but he was just letting the other smaller fish nibble him. He shows no signs of the sickness that killed his mate. My main priority now is to save him (any suggestions?) as he is a sweet and friendly boy and to take your suggestions about my tanks.
Karen

Try the combination of the Maracyn and Maracyn-2 as I reccomended earlier. With those two products you can also add copper-safe (by the same company)which will target any parasites. The great thing about these products is that they can be used togeather will no problems from drug interaction and without causing toxicity to the fish. Keep us posted

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Candice

I would have to disagree about the Ichthyobodo diagnosis because the fish would have been flashing and showing respritory distress way before they just up and died, furthur more extreme Ichthyobodo infections are so irritating that wild fish that are infected will jump out of the water they are so irritated. It is the feeling among pathologists that Ichthyobodo isn't a problem unless they somehow multiply quickly and begin to irritate the fish.Ichthyobodo feed on sloughed off epithelials by the way and the reason they can be a problem at times is because if they find a way to multiply repidly they begin feedig on epithelials still attached to the fish.The only way to tell for sure what you problem is was is to take a skin scraping from your deceased and examine it under the scope and look for Ichtyobodo which appear as light blue flickering organisms which are tear shaped and have 2 pairs of flagella. They are about 20 microns and hard to see if you turn the light up too high.Anymore than 5 present in a field and you have a problem, 5 and under isn't a huge deal. I'm thinking maybe you have some sort of nasty bacterium and there are all kinds of other fish nasties, like rhizopods,(which is what I am studying presently) but I agree with what others have said about which therapy to use.I hope you don't lose anymore loved ones, my condolences and a speedy recovery to those still struggling.I will look through my notes and text books and maybe ask my professor about your situation.

[This message has been edited by Hippolyta (edited 12-04-2001).]

I hope your fish does not die, but if she does would you mind sending me some samples from the fish. I can instruct you on how to take them if it comes to that. The reason being is that I can do a gram stain and then look under the microscope and find out exactly what it was. The symptoms have puzzled me and I have searched the library, vet journals, and the web, but can find no answeres yet. The results would help to enlighten the rest of as (as well as yourself).

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Candice

Gram stain is only going to be helpful in the case of a bacterial infection.Maybe some skin scrapings or gill scrapings?

I would first do a gram stain to pick out gram neitive and gram positive bacteria, and check for WBC. After that I would use the samples she'd gather to make a standard Mcfarlen, and then grow some out on the plate. From that I check for any fungal type infections. Also from the McFarlen Id make up another slide checking for protazoans and parasites. I wasn't very specific in my last reply becouase I did not want it to sound too complicated. Id ask for a sample from each gill, another sample from a couple places on the exterior of the fish.



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Candice

Well it seems we have two very well educated and astute members who are devoted to furthering the general well being of our favorite pets


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TONY
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