# Rasbora help needed please



## Adragontattoo (Jun 3, 2007)

awww damnit....

Looks like I may have big problem..

Watching the 20g tonight, I noticed that 2 of the glowlight rasboras are looking very emaciated, and are having trouble swimming.

I had noticed that fish were "missing" before the move but figured they were buried in the moss or whatever..

Here is the symptoms I can see:

emaciated (appearing starved even though they are eating)
bleached colors
trouble swimming(able to stay stationary but eventually they start to tip over like they are drunk.)

no visible signs of fungus, no pop eye or rubbing.

The 3 oto's in the tank are fine, the bolivian in the tank is fine and so is the adult Bristlenose.

Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, are all testing very low (I suck at matching colors tbh but I can tell that it is low).

I am worried that this may be an internal parasite and not a tank issue, if that is the case, I will soon have a bunch of dead galaxies as well due to 1 Glowlight being in that tank too.

Im gonna rip the 15h apart to try to see what the galaxies look like, I saw them earlier and they were feeding but I am more then a little concerned now.

Any ideas on what to treat for given the description, or should I just let the Glowlights die out and see if the Espei-like ras's get it as well?

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well the 15h seems free of it from what I can tell by using a single LED bulbed cheapo flashlight and chasing small fish around a bunch of plants I cant yank (grown into the cork on the back wall).

The single glowlight in the tank appears very healthy so maybe I will get lucky there (and now I cursed myself).

_________________________

http://www.qcsupply.com/Products/2732.aspx

general recommendation from what I can see.

Problem is that I dont really want to buy a med for a maybe. The link is for what is used to treat wasting in clown loaches it seems. I have 0 loaches.

Copied here from another forum for a larger help base.


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## Adragontattoo (Jun 3, 2007)

http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...aquarium/1024-disinfecting-fish.html#post8015

Link to what info I can find.

Problem is that this med seems to be highly toxic to inverts and I have a good colony of cherries going in the heavily planted 15.

The 20 has only snails so I could care less but I would prefer to NOT eliminate any chance of ever having shrimp in that tank.


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## Adragontattoo (Jun 3, 2007)

bit of an addendum to this.

The glowlights have been in my tanks for a few months, these are not newly added fish.


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## Seattle_Aquarist (Mar 7, 2008)

How about toxins from cleaning or painting in the area? Did not see mention of water changes, are you doing so on a regular basis? I would start with several 20% water changes on consecutive days and see if there is any improvement in the behavior of the fish. Just an idea. Roy


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## John P. (Nov 24, 2004)

Tb?


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## Adragontattoo (Jun 3, 2007)

Seattle_Aquarist said:


> How about toxins from cleaning or painting in the area? Did not see mention of water changes, are you doing so on a regular basis? I would start with several 20% water changes on consecutive days and see if there is any improvement in the behavior of the fish. Just an idea. Roy


No cleaning or painting in the area, I moved the tank to the new condo prior to the move out cleaning of the old place.

Re: the tb Idea.

Wouldnt that affect the Oto's/Bolivian Ram/Ancistrus?


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## Bert H (Mar 2, 2004)

I would vote with John on that one. It wouldn't necessarily affect all your fish, but if it is tb, I would want to remove them from the other inhabitants. It could be the rasboras may be more susceptible for whatever reasons as opposed to your other fish.


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## Adragontattoo (Jun 3, 2007)

Bert H said:


> I would vote with John on that one. It wouldn't necessarily affect all your fish, but if it is tb, I would want to remove them from the other inhabitants. It could be the rasboras may be more susceptible for whatever reasons as opposed to your other fish.


Ill pull them tonight and see what happens with the other inhabitants. At this point, if it continues I will probably just let the tank die off and then bathe the plants in bleach and h2o2 the entire tank gravel and all.


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## Adragontattoo (Jun 3, 2007)

well pulled ALL the glowlights last night (all have varying degrees of issues when I looked at them), hopefully it has NOT spread to the Espei like Rasboras I added on Saturday.

*Espei like because !I! cant tell the difference between Espei, Harlequin, porkchop and whatever else looks exactly the same.


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## JanS (Apr 14, 2004)

I would definitely try de-worming them since it certainly won't hurt anything.

Many of us use a recipe that you can mix into their food, so they directly ingest it and it won't be in your water column to bother the rest of the inhabitants.
Here's the recipe.
Fish de-wormer recipe


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## trag (Jan 9, 2008)

Adragontattoo said:


> bit of an addendum to this.
> 
> The glowlights have been in my tanks for a few months, these are not newly added fish.


Have you recently added any other fish? I once added one cherry barb and one rasboro and in the next month or two all my cardinals, cherry barbs and four out of six rasboros (het. or whatever) died of mysterious causes. The corys in the tank were completely unaffected as far as I could tell (they spawned again, this morning). I write mysterious, because there were no external visible signs of illness, no fungus, no bacteria, no spots, no tiny velvet spots, no flashing, just general wastage and expiration. Two of the rasboras did show a lesion on their caudal pendicle very late in this episode but that could have been a secondary effect.

As for TB, it's a useless diagnosis, unless you like destroying entire tanks with no assurance that you're on the right track. There's no way to be certain of TB without a biopsy, or in this case a dissection or autopsy. It's presumably untreatable. Some fish get it and others don't depending on their relative health, supposedly. Etc. etc.

By the time you accept all the rationalizations or perhaps facts that are needed to make the reality fit the theory of TB, you're left with a disease which doesn't harm fish if they're healthy enough, and is pretty pervasively extant any way. It's just not worth worrying about or acting on, unless you have a tank of death that kills everyone.

As to my tank 'o death. I tried the few antibiotics folks have claimed work on TB. I also ran a course of anti-parasitic food (from Guppy Traders), then a course of anti-paramecium, and then a course of antibiotic food. I was spinning in circles, I tried so much stuff, meanwhile my water was testing fine.

Anyway, after the die off, I had five corys, one male betta and two rasboros left. I turned the tank into a female livebearer isolation (from males) tank for now. Everyone in there is fine with no signs of any disease.

I think I had a quick acting internal parasite of some kind which came in on the new fish. I haven't bought any new fish since, nor will I until I have a quarantine tank set up. All new comers will get a course of anti-parasite food.


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## lauraleellbp (Jan 31, 2008)

x2 or 3 or whatever on trying deworming first. It sounds like an internal parasite to me.

I personally am a big fan of salt treatment; less harsh on fish and effective on a wider variety of issues (fungus, ich, parasites, etc). With sensitive fish (tetras, rasboras, loaches, etc) I dose 1/2 tsp non-iodized salt per gallon and treat for about 2 weeks, or 1 week past the last visible symptom. You can then do a quick series of 50% PWC afterwards and very easy to restore your tank back to normal.


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## Adragontattoo (Jun 3, 2007)

at this point I have euthanized the glowlights (excluding the one in the galaxy tank that I cant catch.

I will try the medicated food for all but the Galaxy tank as I am not going to be able to net out the galaxies, and the meds are highly toxic to shrimp.

There was no new fish added to the tank, the only change was the move but no other tank was affected like the tank containing the glowlights.


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