Fungal disease in Elassoma fry - help, please...

Unfortunately, it seems that the fungal disease that killed the parents of the E. zonatum has attacked the fry that I've been doting over for the past week. I thought it might be a bit of color developing in their caudal fins but it's definitely something else. I'll get one under the scope in the next couple of days if I can to see if anybody else can give me a more specific diagnosis. I've added some Primaquine, which I have a small amount of, but will be off to the LFS to see what else is available. What do you folks suggest given how delicate these little things are?

I meant "Primafix" not "Primaquine.

Clean water and salt, 1 teasp/gal. Fungus attacks fish when something else is wrong, so a fungicide alone wont solve the problem.

Just an update, I may have mistaken normal fry coloration - most seem to have a spot on the little nub that becomes their caudal fins...and the adults may have simply spawned and died. Interestingly, I had a lone male that I'd completely forgotten about in a heavily planted community tank. He was part of the original group. I saw him yesterday for a few minutes, and he seems to be doing OK. Does spawning just wear these guys out, male and female, to the point where they die afterwards?
The fry are all eating like pigs and now look like little versions of their parents.

Does spawning just wear these guys out, male and female, to the point where they die afterwards?

I'm looking at a perfectly healthy but perfectly dead Elassoma in my own tank and wondering the same thing. Spawning certainly does come with risks, but it doesn't necessarily always mean death. The added stress can kill them, but it doesn't every time.

These fish really do have quite a short life span. I have yet to see one of my Elassoma gilberti live for two whole years. That could be because I'm not good at fishkeeping (sad but true) or it could be because they are annual fish, but all I'll say is every single fish I have right now is under two years old.

Edited by EricaWieser, 28 March 2012 - 06:59 AM.

I've communicated with a lot of people about E. zonatum, and it seems that they're just short lived, and as you wrote spawing really takes it out of them and even in aquaria you get one go out of them and that's it. I'd be curious to find out if this is true with all members of the genus, and I'm sure it has conservation ramifications for the rare/endangered ones. I think the ones that I had were doubly stressed because they had recently been shipped, had torn fins and possible fungal infections, but apparently my feeding them all sorts of live food still kept them strong enough for the males to keep beating each other up and the females full of eggs. I'd imagine that like a lot of fish that live in ephemeral environments, like tropical killies, they're just plain short lived even under the best of circumstances. I was really shocked that given their condition they still managed to spawn...that's got to be the result of some serious natural selection.

In the wild many Elassoma do die in late spring or summer the year after they were born; 2+ years olds seem to fairly rare. But in captivity they can easily live up to 2 years, and some zonatum can last 3 years. Spawning can mean everything is ideal in some cases, but it can also be a last-ditch act of desperation for an animal (or plant) thats about to die.

Interesting...hopefully I'll learn a thing or two in raising and hopefully getting another generation out of this batch. I'd imagine that zonatum are found in places that become inhospitable to adult fish by late summer...so I suppose the "last ditch" response makes sense.