57 replies to this topic

[gzeiger]

I'd love to know a good way to intensively culture snails. They get eaten fast in my tanks too.

[Sean Phillips]

I fed them chopped up cocktail shrimp this morning and they completely devoured it! I'll put in half a dozen snails tonight for the Greensides.

[Sean Phillips]

Ok, now once again back to the topic of the sucker . I think I have a plan on where to move him where he'll be with less aggressive tankmates. I'm setting up another 75G in 2.5-3 weeks as an upgrade to my 30L riffle tank. The stock will be something along the lines of 5 mimic shiners, 1 Bluntnose minnow, 5 redside dace, 5 silverjaw minnows, 2 rainbow darters, 2 Greenside darters, 2 Variegate darters, and 2 Logperch. I was also toying around with the idea of adding a pair of blacksides but I'll see. Now getting to my point, so you guys think my 8" white sucker would be ok in that tank until he hit about 12" as far as aggression and bioload with all the other fish? I don't want to overstock the tank nor have the large sucker predate on any of the small darters.

[littlen]

Plenty of room. You're White sucker has a lot of filling out to do first----at 8 inches, before it starts to be able to put on any length. But overall it will do much better in the set up you described. Suckers do not prey on darters. Just take a look at its mouth. Does it look like a mouth built for consuming other fish?

[Sean Phillips]

Ok great! I didn't think it could eat other fish,just wanted to make sure, I've had an experience with a 4" bumblebee catfish eating a 2" longfin pleco so I never trust the mouths of larger fish anymore. I was more concerned about bioload. After the sucker, would I still have room for a pair of blackside darters or am I maxed out after the sucker? I'd be doing 50% weekly WCs.

[littlen]

Catfish (does-not-equal sign) suckers. All those guys do is rummage through soft/fine sediment looking for [small] tasty morsels of food. Hunting fish of any size is simply something they do not do. All catfish do....is the exact opposite, hunt and eat anything they can catch 24/7.




You have plenty of room to add more darters.

[Sean Phillips]

Update on the sucker. I sectioned off part of the tank for him and target fed him for the past couple weeks with no success. He's also now getting very red spots that are a fairly large size on his body. I have a feeling it's an infection of some kind but I can't figure out how to treat it. I treated the whole tank with tetra fungus guard twice and that didn't help. Last night and tonight I also made a mixture of tank water, aquarium salt, and fungus guard in a small plastic container and used a thin plastic syringe to inject it down the sucker's throat into his stomach to see if that works (worked for my striped raphael catfish when he had internal parasites). If he's not better from all these treatments in a few days, I'm probably going to have to eithanize him because his condition is just getting poorer with no evidence that tankmates are making any major negative contributions to his health.

[Sean Phillips]

Any final ideas that anyone might have? I'm going to euthanize him tomorrow morning. I can't back this up scientifically but I'm going to make a hypothesis here. All of the fish in this tank (including the sucker, 3 creek chubs, and 1 green sunfish) aren't eating and are much more skittish than normal because if some sign of chemical that the sucker is releasing due to stress from being sick. I have a feeling if the sucker is removed that the other fish will revert to their usual behavior.

[sbtgrfan]

If you've got a microscope you could always do a skin scrape and gill clip to confirm parasite/bacteria/fungus...etc.
Any pictures of the red spots?
Formalin/malachite green could be a treatment option but I don't think those are readily available, especially malachite green.

[Sean Phillips]

Here's a picture of him (after euthanized)  image.jpg   112.79KB   0 downloads

I also took a skin sample and checked it under a microscope to discover some kind of dots all over him, they were definitely alive, obviously it was impossible to get a picture of them.

[littlen]

Sean, the parasites are obviously external so there wasn't a need to force the solution you made down the fish's throat. Regardless, the sucker was in declining health and it sounds like the infection is/has spread to your other fish. To me, this is evident by the behaviors of the other fish you described and not because the sucker was "releasing a chemical". Try googling common aquarium fish parasites and see if you can find a picture of the bugs you found on your sucker. Once identified you can then begin to treat the remaining fish. Otherwise they will likely get sicker and perish.

[sbtgrfan]

What did the "dots" look like? Possible to give a description of them? If I have some time at work tomorrow I'll check my fish diseases book and see what I can find in case it is something that may infect your other fish. You were definitely correct it was not bullying if you saw something moving under the scope. Sorry I couldn't be of any help.

[gerald]

Red spots on the sucker may be a secondary bacterial infection, originating either on the skin surface or spread throughout the body (septicemia). Your other fish might still recover OK on their own without drugs. The stressed sucker was probably a breeding site for parasites (and bacteria), keeping a high level of them in the tank and overwhelming the other healthy fish. If the other fish begin feeding soon, I would not bother medicating the tank; just wait and see if their immune systems can overpower the disease. If they don't start eating after a few days, then meds may be needed.

[gzeiger]

Regardless of diagnosis, aggressive water changes will help reduce the load on the immune system of your remaining fish. A disease that is communicated through the water will have free-living forms in the water that are still creating additional exposure, which is at least somewhat avoidable.

[Sean Phillips]

What did the "dots" look like? Possible to give a description of them? If I have some time at work tomorrow I'll check my fish diseases book and see what I can find in case it is something that may infect your other fish. You were definitely correct it was not bullying if you saw something moving under the scope. Sorry I couldn't be of any help.

Hard to remember and hard to tell (I don't have the best microscope) but they were close to being perfect circles, just a bit oblong in shape and had a few smaller dots inside of them. I have the sucker preserved in my freezer so I can take another skin sample but the cold has most likely killed the remaining bacteria.

[Sean Phillips]

Red spots on the sucker may be a secondary bacterial infection, originating either on the skin surface or spread throughout the body (septicemia). Your other fish might still recover OK on their own without drugs. The stressed sucker was probably a breeding site for parasites (and bacteria), keeping a high level of them in the tank and overwhelming the other healthy fish. If the other fish begin feeding soon, I would not bother medicating the tank; just wait and see if their immune systems can overpower the disease. If they don't start eating after a few days, then meds may be needed.

They're all eating, unfortunately though about 75% of the food isn't being eaten. Mainly the sunfish will eat and she's eating alright, just slightly less than normal. The chubs however are barely eating at all and are extremely skittish if people are even in the same room which is hard to avoid in my Fishroom. The sunfish is skittish to but I've determined that's from cold water and this happened before any signs of disease even in the sucker. What meds would you recommend?

[Sean Phillips]

Regardless of diagnosis, aggressive water changes will help reduce the load on the immune system of your remaining fish. A disease that is communicated through the water will have free-living forms in the water that are still creating additional exposure, which is at least somewhat avoidable.

I'm doing 50% every other day until the fish are back to normal.

[gzeiger]

I would not recommend medication unless you can diagnose a specific disease. All medications will stress your fish, many will stress your filtration system, and only a few will stress a specific pathogen. If you don't know what the pathogen is, blindly medicating is likely to do more harm than good.

Focus on vacuuming gravel when you change water. Some parasites (not all) will be concentrated near the bottom and can be somewhat selectively removed that way.

[Evan P]

Salt may be a good idea as well.

[Sean Phillips]

I would not recommend medication unless you can diagnose a specific disease. All medications will stress your fish, many will stress your filtration system, and only a few will stress a specific pathogen. If you don't know what the pathogen is, blindly medicating is likely to do more harm than good.

Focus on vacuuming gravel when you change water. Some parasites (not all) will be concentrated near the bottom and can be somewhat selectively removed that way.

Alright, I've been vacuuming every time.