Spinning death

[Lycosid]

So this is being posted in Asian catfishes because I first observed this in a glass catfish but I've now observed it in a sparkling gourami in a totally different tank. The condition is as follows: the fish begins to lose "balance", and while swimming often begins to rotate around its long axis. Eventually (often within a day) the fish begins to have issues controlling its direction of movement as well. Then the fish dies.

Anyone else have experience with this? It doesn't seem to be contagious (a glass catfish died this way in a tank with a dozen others two months ago and it hasn't affected any of the others) and so I'm not sure that it's anything other than organ failure in old age, but I wanted to see if anyone knew more.

[Viktor Jarikov]

I've seen this before with our fish many times. Sometimes it takes a day or a few and other times it can be up to a few months from the beginning symptoms to death.

I've tentatively attributed it to a disease that affects the brain, let it be primary or secondary/tertiary in the chain. I am thinking bacterial or parasitic, but rather bacterial because there are some fish I seem unable to keep that die that way and I have tried multiple times with multiple specimen year apart and it's all the same, which to me points away from parasitic.

Sorubimichthys planiceps is one such example in my tanks. Brachyplatystoma rousseauxii and B. juruense are another, except here there was one survivor out of large batches or 6-10 fish.

[Shane]

It is usually associated with doing a large water change and forgetting to use water conditioner. I have done it more then once over the years. You can add an immediate heavy dose of conditioner. Some will make it and some will not. "Sensitive" fishes like many glass cats, small tetras, and blackwater fishes are impacted at a far higher rate than " tough" fishes.
-Shane

[Lycosid]

It is usually associated with doing a large water change and forgetting to use water conditioner. I have done it more then once over the years. You can add an immediate heavy dose of conditioner. Some will make it and some will not. "Sensitive" fishes like many glass cats, small tetras, and blackwater fishes are impacted at a far higher rate than " tough" fishes.
-Shane

Interesting. Both cases I had were in tanks that were due for a water change and I did that. The glass cat immediately got much worse (although I know that water was chlorine-free, because it was straight RO water that had been sitting for several days until I had time to do that water change) and died overnight. The gourami seems to be doing better after the water change, so we'll see.

[racoll]

A friend had exactly the same thing with a sparkling gourami the other day. This one was being bullied, and then after being isolated it stopped eating and got malnourished.

I think it's just a generic symptom that could be caused by a number of things.

[Viktor Jarikov]

It is usually associated with doing a large water change and forgetting to use water conditioner. I have done it more then once over the years. You can add an immediate heavy dose of conditioner. Some will make it and some will not. "Sensitive" fishes like many glass cats, small tetras, and blackwater fishes are impacted at a far higher rate than " tough" fishes.
-Shane

This plus the fish spinning in shock from a sudden pH change I'd treat differently from what I stated. These are accidental, more trivial kind of things having to do with asphyxia, I think. What I described and what Lycosid is describing, I think, is not a trivial owner error. I could be wrong too, of course.