Eggbound pencil fish?

[Ben Rhau]

Hi all,

One of my N. marginatus females has looked heavy with eggs for well over a month. Very thick toward the anterior, slightly faded colors. For about the last week, she's definitely less aggressive about eating. Do pencil fish tend to reabsorb the eggs if they do not spawn, or is she possibly eggbound? Is there anything I can do about it?

Thanks,
Ben

 

[MacZ]

If there is an egg-complication there is nothing you can do. But it can still be something else, as faded colours and less appetite might be due to other reasons. Can you take a picture?

 

[Ben Rhau]

Seeing a close-up, she has some clear scale protrusion. How would you treat?

 

[Aquaticloch]

almost looks like dropsy, but dropsy isn't the full body in my experience....

 

[MacZ]

This is dropsy. Can see it pineconing. Big volume waterchanges, IALs and alder cones are the only thing in my experience that works. Provided it works at all. Meds have never done the trick for me.

Any new fish lately? What do you feed? Your waterchange schedule?

 

[Ben Rhau]

I had 8 N. marginatus in the QT tank and redistributed them to the other tanks to make room for new apistos in the QT. I think that change was stressful, as I lost one of the marginatus to the tail thing and now one has dropsy. This one had been gravid prior to the pineconing.

As the apistos have graduated to the main tank, this one is now in QT. The tanks get 30% changes weekly, but this one will get 50% changes twice a week.

Food is good. Rotation of frozen foods, krill flake, Bug Bites and BBS.

 

[MacZ]

Dropsy is just a symptom of bacterial infections. If the fish was gravid before it may be weakened. Stress from moving is also bad for the immune system. Usually dropsy-strength infections crop up when the fish was treated with antibiotics or disinfectants at the wholesaler or retailer. Makes them vulnerable to the (often common and normally harmless) strains of bacteria in our home aquaria. It's important to get the fish through this without using meds. Makes them far more resilient.

Up the wc to 3x 50% in a week. So basically every other day. Cram in a good handful of alder cones (like 10-15). It's important to lower the pathogen density to alleviate the pressure on the immune system.
Food sounds good.

If there is no improvement after a week do one or two more waterchanges. If after that there is still no improvement consider to put it down.

 

[Ben Rhau]

OK I know it doesn’t look good but will let you know if things improve. Thanks

 

[MacZ]

You can do it. The method has a slighly higher than 50% chance to get fish back even from pineconing dropsy. I really hope it works.

Just a tipp for your next quarantine: Add some filtermedia and decorations specifically from the tank the fish are supposed to go in to the quarantine tank. That way they are confronted with the bacteria from the start and if infections are bound to happen they already do in quarantine. Otherwise it may still happen after weeks in QT.

 

[Ben Rhau]

Thanks. I did run the sponge in the destination tank for a couple weeks to get it ready for QT and also brought the salvinia over. It’s a good idea.

 

[Ben Rhau]

Update: A little over three weeks now, the affected fish has been in QT with thrice weekly 50% water changes, maintaining 0.5g/L epsom salt. After a few days, she passed a LOT of feces, so maybe was constipated rather than eggbound. She is active and eating well, but the pinecone effect has not gone away. I fear there may be irreversible kidney damage. Is it cruel to keep the fish going, or is she fine as long as she is eating?

 

[MacZ]

maintaining 0.5g/L epsom salt

I'm surprised the fish survived this. Usually it's just short bath's in epsom salt, because too long exposure is quite detrimental usually.

Three weeks and still pineconing... Try another week without salt in the water, if it still doesn't get better end the fishes misery.

 

[Ben Rhau]

It's a much lower concentration than the bath.

 

[MacZ]

That is true, but this is the problem.

The bath technique is using the strong difference in osmotic pressure to countermeasure the kidney failure. (The failure leads to fluid collection in the body.) With a higher percentage of salt outside water is released from the fish by osmotic pressure. The low concentration is useless, as it takes much too long to remove the liquid from the fish so it can still accumulate at the same rate.

 

[Ben Rhau]

I think it may have been useful as a laxative in this case, but I can omit if it’s harmful.

 

[MacZ]

Epsom salt as a laxative, that's new to me. I'd remove it completely.

 

[Mike Wise]

Yes, Epsom salt can be used as a laxitive, but it is next to impossible for a freshwater fish to take it into its digestive track when it is dissolved in water. Fresh water fish have a way that eliminates water from food when eating.