White Cloud Mountain Minnows - Mystery Disease

[caylentor]

Hi folks,

I've posted about this on a few other places but haven't really got anywhere and I'm quite desperate to help my minnows.

I've had an ongoing health issue with my fish for some time - since the end of August it has been continuous, though I've seen some of the symptoms going back as far as May.

I have a 180L planted freshwater tank with (at the moment) 9 WCCMs and 5 Amano Shrimp. I've lost four as a result of this disease and currently have two sick ones, one of whom is looking quite unwell.

The symptoms are vague and unhelpful. Essentially, they stop (seemingly at random) being out and about with the other fish and instead will hide in the plants and not come out. The next day, they will not eat at feeding time. This persists for a random length of time (8+days is common, one fish didn't eat for three weeks). After this, they seem to recover, but only for 2-3 weeks and it happens to them again. Occassionally we see them breathing rapidly, but at other times they don't seem to be struggling other than being quite lethargic and having no appetite, even if food is floating right by them.

It has happened to both male and female fish so doesn't seem related to egg laying. I've had fry hatch recently (we had a big group of them in the middle of November).

I've had an autopsy done by a local vet lab and the results were inconclusive - some moderate irritation to the gill, but no signs of granulomas or internal parasites. This at least seems to mean we can rule out mycobacterium and some other bacterial infections.

I've also had an ICP test done, results are here: ICP results (triton-lab.de)

My parameters are pretty stable. The temperature in the tank has dropped ever so slightly from around 20.3C average to 19.9C average, not unexpected in the winter, and most of the symptoms were happening at the higher stable temperature too. All this seems to have done is increase the time period they are sick for.

Aquarium Stats:

• pH : 7.2
• Nitrates: 10-20ppm (hard to read the exact level of orange on the tests, but it's been this level for a long time, I have stats in a weekly spreadsheet)
• Hardness: 7GH
• Nitrite: 0 ppm
• Ammonia: 0 ppm
• KH/Buffer: 3
• Water Temperature: 19.9C

There's a video of my two currently sick girls here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/6KtreUwza7BEBqQy5  The pink male in the video is (hopefully) healthy, he's just nearly five years old and likes to nap a lot. This is essentially what they do most of the day, but if they get too close to the filter they drift, so I've added some sponges and a net to stop them getting sucked in.

I really want to help them but I've no idea what's up.

We've tried treating for flukes and internal worms with eSHa nxd and gdex after talking to the vet but neither of these seemed to help.

The gold female looks like she's struggling a lot this morning. She was drifting towards the filter intake first thing, though she seems to have settled a little in the cover here.

I really, really want to help my fish and I just don't know what to do next. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

Hi welcome to the forum very sorry about your fish, our medicine guru @Colu might have an idea when they see this but have you considered Streptococcal? Apparently White Clouds are susceptible to this (I learn something new every day) It is a GRAM POSITIVE bacterial infection- have you treated them with a gram positive antibiotic yet? What meds have you used? 

Here is a helpful link to what I found: THE LINK IS A PDF FYI

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdf/FA/FA05700.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiD3KfDp8f0AhUSHDQIHeasBSQQFnoECBYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0_tqhP4aMZamgu8MRr6ZuV

 

Edited December 3, 2021 by xXInkedPhoenixX
1 more thing.

[caylentor]

Hey, I really appreciate the reply 🙂

 

I definitely considered Streptococcal, I found the same link as yourself before, but on reading I'm not sure about the symptoms matching - we didn't find any evidence in the autopsy of an infection and they displayed none of the observable signs mentioned. We haven't got a gram stain done (yet) so haven't been able to rule it out, though as the fish aren't eating then getting an antibiotic into them would be hard. We have tried esha 2000 before which should work on gram-positive, but that didn't help. Are there any good antibiotics in the UK for gram-negative infections? I'm hesitant to treat without knowing what it is but if there's an antibiotic that we can try that won't hurt the fish then I would give it a go at this point.

 

I've also considered gill flukes or gill ich, as they seem to match symptoms there, but esha GDEX didn't do anything helpful so I'm not convinced it is fluke - we had two sick fish when we treated and they didn't improve, and then we had other sick fish shortly after.

 

This was the autopsy result:

"Morphological diagnoses:
Moderate, diffuse, epithelial lamellar hydropic degeneration - gills

Comments:
the only lesion present in the sections examined was the hydropic degeneration of the lamellar epithelium. This is non-specific lesion that results from gill irritation, suggesting water quality or the presence of an irritant in the water is a possibility. The severity of the lesion is moderate, and its relevance with regards to the demise of this fish can’t be established with certainty."

 

However neither my regular testing with the API master test kit nor the ICP test have really indicated any water quality issues.

 

The way the disease spreads from fish to fish also concerns me. Essentially we will have one or two sick at any one time. When one recovers, another gets ill shortly after. We've collected these minnows from a variety of places over some time, so they're not all related to each other, which I think rules out a genetic component to the illness and indicates something transmissable.

 

We did introduce some live plants to a tank about a month before the first fish got ill in May, so I did suspect a parasite then, but I can't be certain. We've given them live food a few times as well so that's another potential vector if it is parasitical.

Edited December 3, 2021 by caylentor

[Colu]

when you treated with Esha gdex did you another course in 2 weeks when you treated with Esha ndx did you follow up with a treatment every week for three weeks @caylentor 

Edited December 3, 2021 by Colu

[caylentor]

We didn't on both counts, on the grounds that (for gdex) none of the sick fish improved at all and we had new fish get ill in the intervening period - in fact one fish actually died following the treatment. For ndx we similarly had no improvement in the sick fish, and there was no sign at all of internal parasites in the autopsy of one of the four who died from it, so it doesn't seem like that's the cause.

We did consider another round of gdex but it really affected our Amano shrimp who promptly disappeared for a month, previously they would come out during the day especially at feeding, which then triggered our algae to go out of control and killed a bunch of my hygrophila by covering the leaves until they decayed. I'd be reluctant to treat with it again unless I was certain it was fluke. Our pink minnow also seems to be quite sensitive to medication, anything we add into the tank has him glass surfing for quite some time after.

I do now have a hospital tank set up, so could treat the fish in isolation, but I don't want to stress them out more than they already are by taking them out of their environment, isolating them and throwing random meds at them.

Edited December 3, 2021 by caylentor

[Colu]

I think the best of course treatment would be kanaplex a broad spectrum antibiotic treatment that treats gram negative and some gram positive bacterial and it's adsorbed thought the skin and gills of fish so it's a great treatment for when your fish aren't eating and metroplex treat's flukes and anaerobic bacteria diseases to cover all bases you can get them off eBay it can take about two weeks to get her from from America unless you can get antibiotic kanamycin sulfate and metronidazole off your vet 

Edited December 4, 2021 by Colu

[caylentor]

Two weeks might be too late for the sick golden one, but I'll see if I can get in touch with the vet for possible prescriptions. I don't think importing meds is going to work either, I imagine they'll get confiscated by customs.

 

Are there any side effects for these medications if the cause is something else? Is using them together safe?

[Colu]

I have got them off eBay for years and not had any problems if you using them together I usually recommend using the kanaplex in food metroplex to dose the water column you can do a course of kanaplex and follow up with a course metroplex

Edited December 3, 2021 by Colu

[caylentor]

Let me see what I can do, at least it's something. Thank you!

 

Should I treat everyone or only the unwell fish?

[Colu]

As you have an active infection going on I would treat all you wcmm to be on the safe side if you worried about your shrimp I would treat your fish in a Qarantine tank or more your shrimp

Edited December 3, 2021 by Colu

[caylentor]

Moving the shrimp isn't very easy because they're so good at hiding, so treating the fish separately might be the best idea. Thanks again.

[caylentor]

Quick update - the vet prescribed enrofloxacin which we're treating the three sick ones (another one got ill tonight - he was drifting along the surface and didn't react when he bumped into a plant, so we've moved him to the hospital too).

 

The treatment is a 5hr bath 3 days in a row, so hopefully it will help. One of the fish is glass surfing quite frantically but the other two are more chilled out.

[Dancing Matt]

Sounds like a mysterious issue, I hope you get it figured out. Out of curiosity, what are you feeding your white clouds? I have had issues with different foods in the past.

[caylentor]

Usually I'll give them JBL Spirulina flakes 3-4 days a week, bug bites 1-2 times a week, frozen daphnia once a week and sometimes bloodworm once a week (usually every fortnight or so). They usually love worms day.

 

Because they've been so unwell recently I've mostly been feeding them the spirulina flakes and daphnia, with the occasional pea.

 

They generally don't have a problem with appetite other than this illness. Some of the fish have favourites (my pink male loves flakes, one female loves daphnia, and a lot of them really love bloodworms).

[caylentor]

Just an update on this because it's still ongoing.

The antibiotic we treated with last week didn't seem to make a difference. The two sick females have now started eating again (one on Tuesday, one on Friday) but we now have a sick male who is off his food and hiding. He hid so well we had to move every plant in the aquarium to find him - we thought he'd died.

I put some Seachem PhosBond Phosphate and Silicate Remover in the canister on Monday to see if we can bring the silicate and phosporous levels down as those are the only things that look odd, but I was under the impression these aren't dangerous to fish?

I had a second water test done comparing the main tank and nursery tank, and the results were within 10% of each other except for:
- lower potassium (2.63mg/l vs 3.38mg/l)
- higher calcium (20.4mg/l vs 14.8mg/l)
- significantly higher phosphorous (1180ug/l vs 220ug/l)

Any thoughts? I really don't want to lose any more fish and the one who is sick I've had for a while and am really attached to.

[Colu]

If you just finished the first course of antibiotics and your not showing much improvement then I would follow up with a second course of enrofloxacin as  antibiotic can sometimes take two courses of treatment before you see any significant improvement  if the antibiotics don't have any effect after two full courses of treatment then I would treat with NT labs fluke and wormer active ingredient is flubendazole that will treat any possible parasitic infection it's not invertebrate safe so I would remove your shrimp  

Edited December 11, 2021 by Colu

[caylentor]

I really want to figure out what's wrong with them. I've two more sick ones today.

Can the elevated phosphate and silicates hurt them? Is that the cause?

I don't think I'll be able to get additional antibiotics without at least some sign of infection. Edited December 13, 2021 by caylentor

[Colu]

High levels of phosphate causes algae blooms leading to low levels of dissolved oxygen silicates also none as brown algae shouldn't effect your fish if your fish have shown not improvement then I would treat with flubendazole Powder it not safe to use with invertebrates in the tank you can add to fish food for more effective treatment 

[caylentor]

We've got the phosphate under control now (very low reading for the last two weeks).

 

Since last Wednesday, we've had every fish in the tank eating and active, which was great. Unfortunately today our smallest female is clamping her left pectoral fin, has a tail that keeps drooping, and she's drifting in the current in the tank a lot. She'll move a bit, then drift, then move. She attempted to eat but spat out most of what she put in her mouth.

 

All the parameters in the tank seem normal so I'm stumped. I had really been hoping that we'd got to the bottom of it.

[Colu]

Did you treat with the medicated food and I would do small daily water changes for a couple of days and add small amount of aquarium salt 1 table spoon for 5 gallons that  will help with Gill function and add essential electrolytes to reduce stress in your  fish at that level it shouldn't harm your plants 

[caylentor]

It's the shrimp I have concerns about with the salt.

Medicated food didn't seem to help, so I'm not sure the cause is bacterial. I was wondering if it was something swim bladder related as she has a bit of a sideways wobble when she swims at the moment?

[Colu]

It's possible it's swim bladder with problems you have already had with fish in this tank it's more  than likely a relapse of the disease that has been affecting your fish 

[caylentor]

Another fish is sick again, so it's definitely a relapse.

How do I look for flukes on such small fish? Is there anyway to identify them other than euthanising a fish, which is what we've had suggested by the vet?

[Colu]

Skin flukes  symptoms are clamped fins increased mucus covering to the body gill flukes symptoms are rapid breathing hanging near the surface tissue damage were fluke anchor to the gills or skin

[caylentor]

They're not hanging near the surface, and there wasn't really any tissue damage in the necropsy report, so I guess it isn't that. We have one female flashing just now, bouncing off plants, but she's still eating.