Suddenly ill purple firefish. Help!!!!

[sgdcover]

Hi,

Last Friday night I fed my oscillaris clown and purple FF. Both ate great and looked healthy. I tested the water earlier that day:

Ph: 8.2
Temp: 82 (pretty steady here)
SG: 1.024
Nitrate: 0
All other major tests mag, cal, phosphate, iodide were within normal parameters.

I got home tonight at 6:30 pm and found the FF on the bottom against the glass breathing heavy and struggling to stay balanced. Stomach is sunken in. The skin is grayish, I see tiny 1mm or less white specks. I had noticed earlier in the week a whit blotch about 2mm on one of her forward fins. I've been keeping an eye on it and hadn't noticed any changes. Fin colors actually look bright and normal.

Tanks been running for 4 months since a move to my new place. Two years before that.

Clown has never chased it around. They've been together now 2.5 months with no issues and I don't see any new aggression.

I'm going to take her out and QT, but I don't have high hopes. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

28g nanocube
4inch substrate
No protein skimmer
Use a refugium with macro
No crabs

 

[sgdcover]

I forgot to include that I had introduced the PF and and a Neon goby together. Within a week I saw ich on the neon. I treated w various medications including medicated food and within two weeks the symptoms were
Mostly gone. Water tested great all along. It's been almost two months with no symptoms, except I noticed staring last week the FF would sometimes scrape against rocks. It happened very rarely and didn't see any other symptoms.

Could it be the ich again? I've never heard of ich attacking and killing so quickly.

 

[Nandez13]

It does sound like ich again but pics would help. A fish can die from ich in a day or it may battle through multiple outbreaks of ich and survive.

When the fish are no longer showing spots it doesn't mean the ich is gone it just means that the parasites have become free swimming. The ich is still present in the tank and will remain so until it doesn't have a host to live off of for 6-8 wks. Feeding extra may help the fish pull through but the surest way seems to be copper treatment in a quarantine tank.

Good luck

 

[sgdcover]

Thanks for the fast reply.

I plan on taking out the clown for two months after all this is done to deal with the icl thing for good hopefully. I've been back and forth on it because I've also read that even cooper won't kill them off completely and there have been cases of certain ich parasites living for up to year with no hosts. Still, worth trying I guess.

So do you think ich can go from no symptoms to almost dead in under 48hrs?

I tried getting some pictures but she looked great in all of them! I couldn't get a good image of what I saw. I just moved her to the QT noticed a cloudy streamer along one side. Seems like something with her skin coat like mucous.

 

[sgdcover]

Well, she didn't make it. If anyone has any suggestions of what it may have been, I'd appreciate it. I still have an oscillaris that I'd rather not isolate unless necessary due to stress and difficulty catching him. She went from healthy, fat, active to dead 60 hours.

I took a good look at the body and other than the stomach I couldn't see anything.

One question I've had that I can't find an answer to:

I had that ich break out in February where I didn't lose any of the fish. The firefish showed very few symptoms and the clown none at all. The worst fish was a neon goby, I used him as a measure of progress. Once he recuperated and was fine for two weeks, I stopped medicating. The neon disappeared in early May (I think a crab was the culprit).

The question: let's assume the fish developed an immunity to Ich. Does that mean the ich no longer have a host or are they just kept at bay by the fish's own immunity system. If the latter, can I assume the ich will die off after 1.5 months as I've seen recommended?