Sick L260 gulping super fast darting sunken belly

[PlecoLover2721]

I got home from work and noticed one queen was darting around the tank gulping faster than ive ever seen had a sunken belly and gill are flared. all the other tank mates are acting normal. the water parameters are the same as they've been for a year 20 nitrate 0 nitrite 7.5 ph .25 ammonia and 81F. I moved him out of the main tank ( not sure what he has so im wondering if I should just treat his main tank since its likely spread and just hasn't shown symptoms yet) anyways treated him with salt like I was treating for ich for plecos and used api general cure for internal parasites. just mainly want to know if anyone has ideas on what this might be. there are not external signs just the symptoms. extremely fast gulping, twitching darting, sunken belly and eyes somewhat. just so strange since he looked normal last night... id love any advice, thanks!

[Raul-7]

0.25 ppm of NH3 is not normal; that is toxic. You need to do a waterchange immediately. What filters are you running?

Lower the temperature to 27-26C.


How many fish do you have and how large is this aquarium?

[Barbie]

While I agree that any ammonia at all is going to be very stressful to a fish in 7.5 pH water, I do not agree that you should lower the temperature. IME, L260 thrive and are happiest above 84, so 81 is plenty low to give them enough dissolved oxygen to work with. The picture shows frayed fins. Are they potentially fighting? Or is it possible there's a parasite issue? If he has chilodonella or oodinium, there is very little chance salt will effectively cure it, IME. At the top of the forum there is a sticky with a list of questions. While I realize to you they may not all look necessary, there are clues and help that we can only give you if we have the answers. Thanks!

Barbie

[Raul-7]

While I agree that any ammonia at all is going to be very stressful to a fish in 7.5 pH water, I do not agree that you should lower the temperature. IME, L260 thrive and are happiest above 84, so 81 is plenty low to give them enough dissolved oxygen to work with. The picture shows frayed fins. Are they potentially fighting? Or is it possible there's a parasite issue? If he has chilodonella or oodinium, there is very little chance salt will effectively cure it, IME. At the top of the forum there is a sticky with a list of questions. While I realize to you they may not all look necessary, there are clues and help that we can only give you if we have the answers. Thanks!

Barbie

I meant it as a temperorary solution to reduce NH3 toxicity since it's related to both pH and temperature.

[TwoTankAmin]

I would not bet on the ammonia on two levels. The first depends upon what est kit you are using.

API is known to be poor for reading lower levels of ammonia. The salicylate method of testing is also subject to giving bad reading if there is any iron in the water or any level of turbidity. Between these two things, more often than not a .25 ppm reading in a tank that is cycled is often not real.

Secondly. ammonia in water turns mostly to NH4- aka ammonium. This is way less toxic than ammonia gas which is NH3. The danger from NH4 is that it can cause external burns, but it is not able to enter the system of a fish via the gills. The NH$ molecule is larger and can not pass through.It takes more total ammonia than .25 ppm for a short term period to harm almost any fish.

In order to understand how dangerous any total ammonia reading is, one needs to know how much is in the form of NH3. As a guideline for this it is felt that all aquatic organisms we might find in tanks are safe if the level is .02 ppm of less and that the danger line is at .05 ppm. In order to know how much of any total ammonia reading is in the form of NH3, we need to know both the pH and the temperature of the water. This is relevant as the 5 of NH3 rises as either of these two measures rises, but pH is the main key.

Looking at your numbers you have a total of .0053 ppm of NH3 in your water. While it takes some fancy math to calculate this, there are calculators online. I use this this one http://www.hamzasreef.com/Contents/Calc ... mmonia.php If you want to use it for fw, set the salinity to 0.

Unless your ammonia reading is .25 ppm on the way down from higher, it should not be an issue short term. And then there is the whole biology of the bacterial reproduction. The ammonia oxidizers are able to double the population in about 8 hours under optimal conditions. So if your tank is cycled and there is a real bump to .25 ppm of ammonia, the bacteria should rapidly grow to handle this small amount. This is not the same thing as when we cycle a tank and there is minimal bacteria and it takes some time to build up.

While I am not saying that ammonia could not be the culprit here under any circumstances, I do not think it is the cause of your problem. If ammonia is an issue in a tank with fish, it is not often limited to just a single fish. A sunken belly is not the result of a bit of very low level ammonia in a tank for a day or two. Then bear in mind that .25 ppm is usually the lowest possible reading on most hobby kits.

Oh, and then there is also this from SeaChem about their dechlor (and many others):

A salicylate based kit can be used, but with caution. Under the conditions of a salicylate kit the ammonia-Prime complex will be broken down eventually giving a false reading of ammonia (same as with other products like Prime®), so the key with a salicylate kit is to take the reading right away. However, the best solution is to use our MultiTest: Ammonia™ kit... it uses a gas exchange sensor system which is not affected by the presence of Prime® or other similar products. It also has the added advantage that it can detect the more dangerous free ammonia and distinguish it from total ammonia (which is both the free and ionized forms of ammonia (the ionized form is not toxic)).

from http://www.seachem.com/support/FAQs/Prime.html

[Mol_PMB]

Really useful post many thanks TTA!


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[PlecoLover2721]

I am using a marineland penguin 350. I tested ammonia with a cheap jungle kit from walmart... .25 was the first level up from 0 and said safe... but it sounds like Twotankadmin explained why that would be. Today testing with a api strip (I knew I should have gotten the expensive testing kit)
nitrate is in between 0-20
itrite 0
PH 7.25
KH 180
GH 60
Temp is 81F
change 25-30% water one or more a week
tank is 55gal with 2 L066, 1 L333, 2 L260, and 3 cory julii's.
all these guys are really small the biggest is the L066 about 3"
we've had the tank set up for almost a year.
only new additions were the corys about a week ago and we had quarantined them for 2 weeks prior.
We feed them shrimp pellets, algae wafers, and frozen shrimp

Its just so weird because he went from normal to sunken belly and erratic in one day and he's the only one showing these signs, although two months ago we did have a small gold nugget for two days that acted and looked the same way, we brought him back to the store, and one week later our whole tank broke out with white spots, ich I assumed. That was treated with salt and super ich clear for 2 weeks and then everything was fine till now. Another thing that makes no sense is one other guy a L066 is really fat, I think he may be constipated though because hes been like this for about two weeks and it couldn't be bloat from what I've read. ill post a pic of him, but he wont come out of his cave, ill probably take him out and get a better one soon. This is very rambling I know but that's just a background of this tanks latest problems. Thanks for your posts, very informative!

[PlecoLover2721]

Sadly my queen died last night, I got home and he was upside down in a log... :'(
I don't get it because he was acting better in the quarantine tank, not darting and gulping so much, but maybe he was just exhausted. Just so sad since hes my oldest queen and has been though and survived multiple sicknesses before. I just cant stand losing them.