Spinning and dying?

[Olorin]

Hi. I have some Apistogrammas in my tank (150 gallon approx). It is Pucallpaensis and Agassisi. I have had the pucallpaensis for three months and since two weeks ago they have started to die off. First they spin around chasing their rear fin like a silly dog. Then they tire and lie flat on the side and death occurs with the hour. What is this? What can I do about it. I thought it was some kind of poison so last week I changed 80% of the water to reverse osmosis water and added some salt. But today I will loose another fish again it seems. Help!:frown:

 

[Mike Wise]

It seems to be similar to "Whirling Disease" that is found in some trout in the western US. It is caused by a parsite and I know of no cure. I have never heard of it occurring in tropical fish, however.

 

[Olorin]

That is grim news indeed Mike if that would be the case. The only upside so far is that I have Agassizi in the same tank and they are yet unaffected so is seems to be Pucallpaensis only so far. Hope it stays that way I am now moving the Pucallpas to a separate tank and adding a mixed tonic of medicin.

 

[tleehm]

I've had similar death happened to my pucallpaensis female, but the male is fine and don't exhibit any such problem at all (and he's been living happily after for over a year since the female's death and is still alive and well).

I've since placed him with a group of agassizi. sp. Tefe and neither shows any repetition of the same problem.

I classified my encounter of this as an once off.

 

[Olorin]

I just thought I should report back now. I t was a few months ago since I moved my last the Pucpallpaensis to a small tank for medication. I thought they responded well to the treatment at first. I was pretty sure I hade managed to save my two last females and a single male. After another week of no problems one female and the male bred in that tank. The very day after the eggs hatched the male died. After two more days the female disappeared. Yes, disappeared I serached the tank for the body and outside the tank if she had manage to jump out and she was no where to be found.

To my horror I saw the last female hunt the fry. So I swooped her up in panik and dumped her in my community tank. At this stage I hade approx 50 new born and no parents.

I tried to feed them with fresh hatched artemia but apparently it was to big cause I could not see any of the eating it.

After yet another week my last female grew into a small male. It is amazing how much they can disguise. I saw a nice potential since I could be sure he was not the father of the fry I had more than one blood line. But as usual, when he started to show his color he started to spin and died. It seemed more like a curse of the Inkas than a disease.

Now another month or so later I have approx 15 small juniles and pray that they are free from the spinning curse of death. What do you make of this?

 

[Bilbo]

I had that with a pair of Viejita. It was diagnosed as dropsy but I never thought it was. I still dont know but just like you said they spun round and round in circles and lay down and died.
I put it down to poor water quality after I moved to a small rural town

 

[Olorin]

I had that with a pair of Viejita. It was diagnosed as dropsy but I never thought it was. I still dont know but just like you said they spun round and round in circles and lay down and died.
I put it down to poor water quality after I moved to a small rural town

So did I and started using Reverse Osmosis water, but that did not help. If it was the water they got a fatal dose of chlorine from the start, but it seemed doubtful. Maybe... we will never know cause I was to "cheap" not to send them in for an autopsy that would have costed me 200 bucks. I considered that long and hard, but after the professor told me that the only thing he could find out was if it was a virus or a bacteria and not which strain it seemed pointless.

 

[jose_vogel]

Four months ago (March 20th), a big area of grazing pasture (about 25 square miles) got fire. It was 125 miles (200 km) from my home.

All the fish were doing fine.

On the worst day of fire (lot of smoke in my city) almost 70 fishes died (30% of my stock). All of them died in the same way: full of colour, they began to swim in whirles and then they began to swin with no destiny and died with heavy breath and full coloured.

I didn´t know what to do and began to make massive water changes and to throw activated charcoal in the water.

I have 24 tanks, 4 of them heavily planted and those ones (the planted ones) were where there weren´t any deaths.

Your story reminds me that "#@#~% day.

 

[Olorin]

Interesting Jose. It seems a lot like the same. But my fishes were held in a massively planted tank so plants did not save mine.

The two top theories so far regarding my case is.

1. The fish was wildcatch and likely hade some dormant virus from the very start. According to Torbjörn Hongslo (breeder of the Hongsloi) there are viruses that only attack Apistogrammas and develop very slowly.
   
2. Something was wrong with the water. Either chloramine och kopper in the tapwater.

 

[jose_vogel]

Olorin, ¿do you have shrimps or snails in that tank?

If you have, ¿are they still alive?

 

[Olorin]

Never had any shrimps. I used to have some very small snails (the cinnamonbun kind), but I have very few now when I think of it... Does that give any clue?