sick/dead pleco

I came in from work one day last week to find one of my zebs with a swollen stomach.
It is roughly 9-10 months old. All other zebs are ok.
I havent fed them anything new or different.
I cant find any feces in the tank to say if it is white or stringy.
The plec was blood shot on top of his head, between the eyes.
The underside has a small verry red indent just below the mouth.
The left side of the belly is black and the right side is red (blood red )
Breeding is a little fast but not overly so. Still swimming but i dont give it much hope.

Water; temp 28.5c pH. 6.8 Gh. 6 kh. 4 Amonia. 0 Nitrite. 0 Nitrate. 2.5

I was unable to save him. 24 hours later he died.
It has been in this tank for 2-3 months.
The day he died he had fungus coming from his Annis. This would suggest to me that he was blocked up, with a small piece of feces at the Annis that fungus-ed.
I did a quick armature examination just after he died.
As soon as i opened him up what appeared to be boil (like oily water) oozed out.
I looked at some blood under a micro scope. It appeared like it was 40% white cells, or gas/water. i just dont know. But it just wasn't right.

Ok after opening up a new test kit to double check my water everything is pretty much the same except the kH 50ppm-2.8dH and the gh 60ppm-3.36gH.
the test kit i was using wasn't old, about 3 months old. But we all know test kits can be wrong.
With the gH been so low is it possible he was taking in water and not able to excrete it again?
The idea of osmoregulation sounds most likely except for the hemeraging in the head. Unless the water retention caused not only the swelling but some sort of flux between the water and the blood resulting in the blood vessels swelling making them visible in the head as well as the body.
I am clutching at straws here so forgive me if it sounds ridiculous.
If it was osmoregulation or brought on by osmotic stress how could this have been reversed successfully?
I have read that increasing gH can cause a calcium build up in the kidneys resulting in death.

Here you can see the hemariging(spelling) between the eyes. Still alive here.


Dead in this pic. Some of the swelling has gone down. If you look closely you can see the fungus.


Here is a link to see a slide of the blood and when i opened him up.
s11.photobucket.com/albums/a171/platty252/sick%20zebra%20pleco/

I am open to ideas here. I would hate to lose any more of these.

Hi,

Sorry to hear he didn't make it. I got some advice when I had a problem with a Starlight Bristlenose from the guys on this forum. The appear pretty knowledgable and specialise in plecos. It may be worth getting their opinion.

Sorry I can't be of any more help.

www.plecofanatics.com/forum

Osmorgulation would only occur if you added salt.

I recon it could have been calamanus worms. They do protrude out of the anus. Could not think of it last week because I had a few 7 ups.
I don`t know if they leave the host when it dies.
Just a long shot maybe.
Too tired to write now but will give you a bell tomorrow.

If have seen this many times before with any doubt its bacterial disease at the root of the problem.

1 tablet of antibiotics per 2 feet of quarantine aquarium aquarium ever second day for 6 days. Naturally it will kill you bio filter if you treat in the aquarium better use a 25L bear bucket with tank water and a heater, anti biotic were left in large number at last month ITFS meeting, see president for more info.
sean

bakterial infection of the intestine or possibly a tumor. Definitely not worms. To be sure of what your fish died I would have to dissect it and have a look at it under a microscope. Tumors are easy to see with the bare eye. Bacterial and viral infections are more dificult to diagnose. I know you paid a fortune for the fish and it's a pity to lose it. However, to get it professionaly dissected you'd probably would have to spend the same again. I did some histology on fish in college and it's not cheap for the simple reason that it is quite time consuming. And if it's viral you are looking at a trip to an electromicroscope. If it is bacterial you'd have to start a bacteria culture to exactly know what bacteria are the culprits.
If you really are interested into fish diseases try to get a hold of Untergasser's books on fish diseases. They are available in English.


Holger

bakterial infection of the intestine or possibly a tumor. Definitely not worms. To be sure of what your fish died I would have to dissect it and have a look at it under a microscope. Tumors are easy to see with the bare eye. Bacterial and viral infections are more dificult to diagnose.

Holger

I disagree the bacterial infection is limited to the intestine, if you look underneath the greenish area of the intestines is bacterial infection and if you open it up it would have a sweat smell, this is very common in the Hawaiian yellow marine Tang, but the infection is not limited to the abdominal cavity of the fish. Look at the above shot and the redness there to, you would need to dissect the cory in the other tread, but in this pleco thread is a defo, naturally it would probally have other slight infection such as prozoea to, but that was not the cause of death, its bacterial septasemia.

Anto; It definitely wasn't Camallanus. It was fungus on the anus and not worms.
If it was I would have found them when I opened him up.
They die with the host, but they lay eggs outside.
Maybe this is why they tend to stick out of the Anus.
You wouldent have to add salt for osmoregulation to occur.
Fresh water fish carry a certain amount of salt in their body. Were do they get the salt? I would say they get it from calcium in the water.(guessing)
Why I taught osmoregulation was the problem was the water retention.
Also it’s been known to happen to young L-46 and I think L-88.
But I do appreciate you giving it some taught.

Sean/Holger; Can you explain why you know it’s a bacterial problem.
I only ask this because I was in touch with a couple of people that breed these fish.
They say they have had this problem before. When the gH was too low the young fish would retain water. When they increased the gH the fish would recover briefly only to die a few days later from a build up of calcium in their kidneys. I suppose these would be kidney stones.

What would have triggered the bacterial infection (no tumors found) ?
What are the chances of the other fish catching this?

Holger I have heard of Untergasser’s books on fish diseases, but I’m afraid it would be wasted on me.

I cant say I noticed a sweet smell when I opened him up, but I wasn't sticking my nose in either.
I will have to look up bacterial septicemia.
Sean tanks again for the med’s at the meeting. When I see the president I will get some of him.
_________________

Anto; It definitely wasn't Camallanus. It was fungus on the anus and not worms.
If it was I would have found them when I opened him up.
They die with the host, but they lay eggs outside.
Maybe this is why they tend to stick out of the Anus.
You wouldent have to add salt for osmoregulation to occur.
Fresh water fish carry a certain amount of salt in their body. Were do they get the salt? I would say they get it from calcium in the water.(guessing)
Why I taught osmoregulation was the problem was the water retention.
Also it’s been known to happen to young L-46 and I think L-88.
But I do appreciate you giving it some taught.

Sean/Holger; Can you explain why you know it’s a bacterial problem.
I only ask this because I was in touch with a couple of people that breed these fish.
They say they have had this problem before. When the gH was too low the young fish would retain water. When they increased the gH the fish would recover briefly only to die a few days later from a build up of calcium in their kidneys. I suppose these would be kidney stones.

What would have triggered the bacterial infection (no tumors found) ?
What are the chances of the other fish catching this?

Holger I have heard of Untergasser’s books on fish diseases, but I’m afraid it would be wasted on me.

I cant say I noticed a sweet smell when I opened him up, but I wasn't sticking my nose in either.
I will have to look up bacterial septicemia.
Sean tanks again for the med’s at the meeting. When I see the president I will get some of him.
_________________

Truth be known Darren I never taught for one minute i was Calamanus worms but as we said at the meeting it might be viral or an internal bacteria I just wanted to offer an other option.
It is nice to get people googling to see what Calamanus worms are.
I think it is Septecemia myself but after reading parts of my latest fish disease book I don`t like making assumptions.
But that defeats the purpose of forums so I will make assumptions in future.

Ormorgulation requires the salt level in your tank water to be higher than the salt level in your fish. Wether other molecules oppposed to salt can cause Osmorgulation is beyond me.
Fresh water fish drink a lot less water than Marine fish as they contain more salt than the water in which they live.Marine fish on the other hand would drink more water as the enviroment in which they live contains more salt than they posess inside. So they lose moisture through their body through the process called Osmorgulation..Thats why I said Osmorgulation would require you to add salt for the fish to loose moisture.

The internet contains tons of b/s**t and certain sites are better than others at dishing it out.
If I am wrong on salt being the most inportant factor in osmorgulation than I hope you can pardon my ignorance and educate for future reference.

Talk to you soon.Anthony......

Hi Darren,
classical signs of a bacterial infection are reddish marks under the skin, that's how you can tell.


Holger

Almost forgot to mention. If you treat with antibiotics try to get a broadband antibiotic that will treat gram negative as well as gram positive bacteria. You can empty the factory of an antibiotic that treats against gram-positive into your tank and if the bacteria you need to treat are gram-negative you might as well kill the fish and burn the money.

FYI. With the gram test you are trying to dye the outer shell of a bacteria. There are four steps (google gram test, I'm too lazy to write it all down here and also don't want to bore people). If the outher shell takes the dye a bacteria is said to be gram-positive if not gram-negative

Holger

I can not say for sure what caused the bacterial infection it could be one of 3 possibilities.
Environmental stress (then see a specialist who know more about the fishes habitat requirements etc)

Secondary infection cause by an initial primary infection, e.g something as simple as white stop.

Oral route eating a fish that died from a similar bacterial disease or feeding the fish frozen fish food of which contained fish flesh from a fish that had the diease.

N.B the red blootes on the belly are classically bacteria septicemia (this photo could bee used in a text book cases as its so clear, and not a typical.

As this fish has not been near a commercial tropical fish farm (I hope) the bacteria strain would not have much immunity so if you had started anti biotic treatment 7 days before the fish died it could of had a good out come. (the red on top view of the fish would of rang the alarm signals for anti bitic treatment to commence, ofcourse once the treatment is sucessfully treated it could come back aging if there is something wrong with the eniroment.

Well i finally get a chance to come back to this tread and i think i know what caused the problem.
A little over a year ago there was a problem in my area with the water.
When you added new water to a tank you would get an instant oil slick across the surface of the water and the fish were suffering.
I know of a few people in my area that lost fish at this time.
I decided to install an ionic carbon filter. This seemed to salve the problem and i have been using it ever since.
This was supposed to be good for 33'000 gallons. I have used roughly 4,480gallons since i started using it.
The TDS from this unit was 80ppm when i started using it.
The TDS is now 128ppm which is strange since it is only 93ppm before going through the filter.
To me this would suggest the filter is leaching pure badness back in to the water.
I should also mention i have bacterial problems in a couple of other tanks with no deaths except for the zebra pleco.
No nets, hoses etc are used from tank to tank.

All bottom dwelling catfish are prone to bacterial infection as most bacteria tend to proliferate near the tank base or in the substrate. Worn down barbels in Corydoras species is usually caused by bacteria as they grub about the substrate looking for food. I use polyfilter intead of carbon as it does not shed dangerous waste when full.