Please help with Angelfish

Dear Prof Dirk,

Can you please help me with the following Angelfish problem? I have used your Discus disease questionnaire, with the discus specific questions removed, if that’s ok? (It’s just the one question relating to how long I’ve been keeping discus). I would greatly appreciate your help as what I thought was a once-off issue has now happened again.

Kind Regards,

Jennifer Bond

Where do you stay?: Kensington, Johannesburg
How long have you been keeping tropical fishes?: 1 year
Description of the sick fish (age, size, breathing speed): Black Angelfish +1 year old, body diameter (excluding fins) 4-5 cm, height (including fins) 8-9 cm, normal breathing
Describe the problem that the fish is having: (behaviour, breathing, excretion (droppings), food intake, colour): My black Angelfish died this week, a week after laying eggs. Before she died she had stopped eating and her previously flowing fins and long fin extensions looked very tattered. She was staying at the top of the tank staring at the corner. I’m not sure this was caused by aggression. There was some “normal†Angelfish posturing, but I didn’t see any extreme aggression that made me think she needed to be separated. In fact, the other fish left her alone when she was “staring at the cornerâ€. However, the morning before she died she seemed to be a little more interested in life, so I was surprised when I got home that afternoon and she was dead.
Has the problem occurred before?: Yes, previously my striped Angelfish also died a week after laying eggs and also looked very tattered. This is why I think it must be something I am doing wrong.
Have you treated the problem and how?: I treated with Microbelift Artemiss and Rooibos tea.
Have you had any other problems in the past? What were they? Did you treat for these problems? How? 2 swordtails died separately a couple of months apart without showing any symptoms. Don’t know if it’s related. I didn't treat because there were no symptoms.
When and where did you buy these fishes from and what size were they when you bought them?: Bought from a pet shop January last year. They were about 2-3 cm.
Your aquarium (Size; what do you have in the aquarium such as logs, stones; plants; gravel; fertilizer use; CO2? etc.): Aquarium size: 120cm X 50cm X 60cm +- 340L; Plants – vallis, amazon sword. Driftwood. 1 quartz rock, no ferts, no CO2

Your filtration (Type and size of filter, what is in your filter, liters per hour): Canister filter with sponge, ceramic, floss, 1100l per hour
Aquarium hygiene: (how do you clean your aquarium and your filter, how often do you clean your filter, when last did you clean your filter, when last did you clean your gravel?) 50% water change every 1-2 weeks, Gravel vac when we do a water change. Once a month clean filter media by squeezing out sponges and rinsing ceramic bits in water change water, periodically replace filter floss. Filter was due for a cleaning, so was last cleaned about 4 weeks ago.
How many fishes do you have in your tank (discus, their size and other fishes): 9 Cories, 2 Swordtails, 3 other Angelfish, 1 Krib
When did you last buy any new fishes and from where were they bought?: Last bought 6 cories from same pet shop, 3 months ago
Which food are you feeding and how often do you feed? ? As a staple, small amounts 2-4 x per day - Alternate Omega one flakes – colour and veggie; Tetramin crisps; Sera vipagran;
Periodically (every 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] week +/-) – defrosted frozen peas
As a treat - 2x per week, alternating different types – frozen blister pack blocks (daphnia, brine shrimp bloodworm, white worm
Water changes? How often, how much, what is the temperature of the water you use for water changes, what is the source of the water (tapwater, well water, borehole water, river water) :
Water changes every 1 – 2 weeks. Temperature is never more than 1 deg C different from the tank water. We use water from our natural pool (originally from tap). The natural pool is circulated through large gravel bio-filter which is heavily planted. Pool is 90000L. There are 3 x 1 year old goldfish in the pool. Wildlife includes toads that have moved in and other assorted water life.
Do you prepare your water for water changes? Reverse osmosis, peat filtration, do you add peat extract?: “Prepared†through natural pool. Nothing chemical added.
Water description (smell and colour): No smell other than pleasantly aquarium-y. Tea coloured (because of rooibos)
Water parameters in your aquarium
Temperature of the water: 25 deg C
General hardness (GH): 8
Carobonate hardness (KH): 6
Ammonia : < 0.5
Nitrite (No2-): <1
Nitrate (No3-): <10
pH-value and how did you measure your pH: 7 - 7.2. Measured with test strips (not expired - I checked)


Thanks again
J

 

Hi Jenn,

I am sorry to hear about the loss of your angelfish, and I will try to pinpoint the reason. However, I would like to thank you for the detail that you have included in the disease diagnosis sheet, it just makes an accurate diagnosis so much easier.

In general, you tank filtration, the setup, and the water changes cannot be faulted. Your feeding is fine, you could perhaps just check vitamin C levels in the diet for reasons that I will mention later, but all this sounds fine. Your water source sounds fine, because it is in good biological balance, but it does mean that your water comes from a natural source and that pathogens could be introduced in this way. However, the source in principal should have far less problems than water from the tap with the associated chlorine problems.

When a angelfish looks tattered one does suspect that other angels are putting it under pressure and could be responsible for the attacking the fish. This means that the fish has been put under stress in the process and stress is known to reduce the efficiency of the immune system and stressed fishes are therefore more prone to disease. The fact that the fish had spawned a week before also tells me that there was breeding activity in the tank, what happened to its mate? Did they fight about the eggs? So I believe that stress did contribute to the problem.

Could you see if this fish produced white stringy poop before it died. Why I ask this is because this would indicate flagellate organism problems. These organisms occur in the gut of angels, discus and particularly other South American cichlids. In discus such organisms can be particularly bad because they will infect the gut, damage the gut and penetrate the body of the fish and will cause holes above the eyes of the fishes and around the gills. It has been found that lack of vitamin C in the diet is one of the main factors that allow these bugs to become pathogenic and to attack the gut lining and the body of the fishes. Angels carry these organisms and are in principle a lot less sensitive to flagellate organisms than discus. They will only rarely develop hole in the head symptoms, but the main problem is that they damage the gut of the fishes. Particularly when angels are stressed they start to get sick from flagellates and can die such as your fish has done. So I think this is possible. You can treat against flagellate organisms and you could consider treating the fishes with metronidazole at 7 mg per litre. Do one treatment, change 50% of the water after three days and repeat the treatment again and change 50% of the water again after three days. This treatment does nothing to plants and filtration so you could consider this. However, you can also see that vitamin C in the diet can play a contributing role so if you can increase that in the diet it will also cause an improvement.

Then I would also like to mention that of all strains of angels, black angels are the most inbred, so this problem can also be aggravated by the inbreeding. On top of this the black pigment that black angels produce to be black costs the fish a large amount of energy which essentially also stresses it. I also keep and breed black angels as I think they really look striking but I want to try to breed some of my wild angel crosses into the black to work against the inbreeding. What I can say is that double black gene black angels are really slow growers and are under quite high pressure as a result.

Finally the flagellates could have come with the fishes when they were bought over a year ago, but because your system does get water from this open pond, you can actually never control which diseases you might be introducing in this way, and this can also be questioned.

However, this is not a problem that comes from poor nutrition or direct introduction via new fishes and is as a result complex, with all of the factors that I have given contributing and together causing the death of the fish. I would particularly check the poop of your present fishes, to see if they have potential problems, but I think stress and the fact that this was a black angel all played a role. Perhaps you should intervene earlier in future if you see when the fins of the angelfish get frayed, but would also like you to comment on what happened when they spawned.

Hope that my discussion will help you, but do please answer my questions so that I can assist further.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Thanks Prof Dirk

The fish's mate is still there, they didn't fight over the eggs - just ate them. Before they spawned there was some lip locking and head butting. As I understand it, this is normal courting behaviour. However, the other Angels seemed to be bothering the pair and hanging around the eggs and generally getting in the way, so the stress could have been caused by that. I didn't mention before that her condition dropped very quickly. From one day to the next she went from long, flowing fins to tattered and the next day she was dead.

I noticed my fish had white stringy poop a while ago. I was keeping an eye on it because I was worried it might be flagellates, but I haven't seen it recently, so I thought it was a false alarm. They do sometimes have strings, but it is brown. However, I don't actually know how to tell the difference between normal, healthy poop and unhealthy poop, so flagellates could be the problem.

I take a good quality, organic vitamin C which has 500mg vit C per tablet. Can I use this for the fish (dissolved, of course - they're huge)? If so, how much and how often? I think it could be worth doing an initial treatment for flagellates as well.

Kind Regards

Jennifer

 

Hi Jenn,

I fear that in tank bred angels, their instincts with regard to breeding are often abnormal and in my opinion, the behaviour of the other angels, when they spawned, was not normal. When I get my angels to breed, I do separate the pair into their own tank, so I have been assisting mine against the intentions of the others. Perhaps you should consider this when this happens in future.

Was this black fish a normal finned fish or half-veiltail or veiltail?

Considering what you are explaining, I would suggest that you do the metranidazole treatment that I have suggested before. Go to the chemist and ask for this medication, they can give you a cheap generic, but they may require a prescription and then you must ask how you they can give you the tablets in spite of this. Alternatively get a prescription from Dr Elshove, he is a vet on the East Rand somewhere and he is the most knowledgable fish vet in Johannesburg and keeps fishes himself. Tell him I referred you to him, he knows me.

Vitamin C addition to the water is useless, it is oxidized away on no time, and it is hardly absorbed, so I would check on the vitamin C contents of the foods that you feeding and feed more of those that have more vitamin C. I would also feed more frozen brine shrimps (these are large adult shrimps, just so that we do not get mixed up here) which contain components which are not in other foods.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Hi Prof Dirk

Just an update. I did the metronidazole treatment on all tanks and it seems to have worked I had 3 Angels left after the 2 that died after spawning. 2 of these have formed a pair. They are marble Angels. They have spawned 3 times since the treatment. So far they've eaten all the eggs. I'm sure they are just figuring things out. Not that I mind as I don't think they are the best specimens. They might also both be female? They were bullying the other Angel so I moved them into the quarantine / hospital / naughty corner tank.

I have bought 2 more Angels as I've been told you need at least 5 Angels to spread the bullying. Is this true? I have also re-scaped the main tank so that when I re-introduce the naughty Angels they will hopefully think it's a brand new environment and won't be such bullies. That's the theory, let's hope it works in practice.

So, thanks for your help. My fishies are looking happy and healthy.

Jenn