budangel8

I've had my tire track eel for almost a year. I noticed today that he has labored breathing and is just going up to the top of the tank with his body just hanging down. He has some white spots on him and I'm very concerned I'm going to lose him. I checked water and amonia, nitrites and nitrates are all within the normal ranges. He usually comes out at night and swims around and spends the day hiding in his log. I feel so bad and am concerned I'm going to lose him. Not sure what to do. Should I do a water change, should I move him out of the tank and set him up in a 15 gallon and treat the tank with anything. My concern about a new set up is that it will shock him even more. All suggestions are welcomed.
Marina

budangel8

Hello, I’m hoping you can help me by providing a little advice.

I've had my tire track eel for almost a year. I noticed last Wednesday that he has labored breathing and is just going up to the top of the tank with his body just hanging down. He has some white spots on him and his tail looks like it has some sort of infection. I’ve attached several photos. I checked water and ammonia, nitrites and nitrates are all within the normal ranges. He usually comes out at night and swims around and spends the day hiding in his log. I feel so bad and am concerned I'm going to lose him. Not sure what to do. I’ve done a water change and have started treating the tank with Melafix for the past 5 days. However, his tail seems to have gotten worse and the red sore spot has moved up some on his tail. I have noticed that his breathing is better and he is swimming around more.

I have him in a 75 gal tank along with a Cory cat fish, beta shark, angel fish and knife fish. These have all been in the tank for the past year with no problems at all. I do a water change every 3 weeks and feel them frozen blood worms which my eel used to love. He has not ‘visibly’ eaten in 5 days. I give him the worms and he turns his head and refuses to eat.

I’m not sure at this point what to do for him any advice or guidance you can provide will be appreciated.

Lucy

I'm sorry your eel isn't feeling well.

I don't know about tire track eels, but I see you change your water every 3 weeks, it has me wondering if your nitrates are high?

What are the readings for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates?

I hope you don't mind, I've moved the duplicate question into this thread.
It will be less confusing for you and the members who can help to have the answers in one place.

Good luck, I hope he feels better soon.

budangel8

Thanks Lucy. This is the first time I'm using these forums appreciate the guidance.

Water readings are all normal. I tested them at home last week as well as took a sample to my local fish store who said they were fine. So I apologize I don't have the actual numbers.

I've been treating with the melafix but just went and picked up some primafix. I was advised to do another 25% water change before dosing.

Lucy

Your welcome You'll get the hang of it.

If none of the other fish are showing symptoms it might be a good idea to move him to a hospital tank so as not to expose healthy fish to medications.

Hang in there, our members have a wide range of knowledge so others should be able to weigh in on this.

pinkfloydpuffer

The best thing to help us find out whats wrong is if we know the water parameters...
Is it possible for you to get a test kit? The API Master test kit is highly recommended.
What's your hospital tank setup? Does it have heater, filter, etc? Can you use some filter media from your other tank to get a cycle in your hospital tank?

budangel8

I don't have a hospital tank set up. I've never needed one. SHould I be setting one up now? How do I set one up? My concern is that it would be a new fresh tank.

I'll get the API Master test kit and post water parameters later.

I got the primafix but have not dosed the tank yet. I've been using the melafix for 5 days. I also got some rid-fungus as well and am trying to decide which to use. Also I hate to dose the tank with healthy fish in it. I'm thinking I can move the healthy fish to another tank and just keep the eel in my 75 gla tank.

Can you tell this is all new to me and I'm starting to panic

pinkfloydpuffer

It would be safer to have a hospital tank, just so you aren't treating all the fish unneccessarily. Just set it up like any other tank. I'm not familiar with the Emperor filters... do they have removable media in them? (sponges, carbon, etc?) If so, what kinds?

Dealing with disease is a hard and not-fun process... Try to calm down and think things through. The best of us have a hard time deaing with sick fish, it's hard on the nerves.

budangel8

I'm posting this for mom as she is a little busy at the moment. I just tested the water again and the readings have changed since we had the all clear.

pH - 7.8
Amonia - .25-.50
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - 10-20

The amonia has climbed a bit as it was 0 before hand and the Nitrates have climbed some as well as we were holding at 10 or a little below.

The emperor filters use Bio wheels as well as carbon filters (which have been removed per the directions on the medicine) so they do have media we can use, just a little hesitant as we setup a hospital tank once before and 5 hours after adding the fish he died. Obviously we didn't have enough time to have it go through a full cycle but I did let it run for a day before adding the fish. We do have a spare heater but do not have a spare filter, would have to borrow one from the main tank.

pinkfloydpuffer

That ammonia is a problem. Is there lots of uneaten food being left in the tank? Sounds like you're going into a minicycle, so the sooner you can figure out the cause the better...

I don't think the fish's death was from the hospital tank in just a few hours... but I can't be sure. If you want, you could even use some water from the main tank, and then use a heater to keep it at the same temp as the main tank so that there's as little stress as possible in moving.
You'll need a filter in there, or at very minimum an airstone, but a filter will be much better, as you can have some bacteria to take care of the ammonia...
By the way, what do you feed the eel? Just bloodworms? Or several things?

budangel8

So do you just have a hospital tank set up at all times? do you keep anything in it? I guess I'll need to reseach this alittle more.

Yes, the filters have removeable carbon which I have removed.

pinkfloydpuffer

I put mine in storage between uses, and when I need to use it take a portion of the filter media from the main tank's filter to use.

I'm considering running a small filter in addition to the main filter in each of my tanks to use for this purpose, but I haven't gotten around to it yet

budangel8

We just feed them blood worms nothing else. I think the spike is we tried to feed him last night and he didn't eat, was probably some food that didn't get picked up by the others.

pinkfloydpuffer

They'd all likely benefit from some variety in their diet...

The food is likely the cause of your spike. Make sure to remove uneaten food

Now, about the white spot... does it look like a wound? Is it indented, poking out, or even with the skin?

budangel8

It doesn't look like a wound, and it is even with the skin.

pinkfloydpuffer

Is it fuzzy at all? Or is it just a discoloration?

budangel8

Here is a pic of his tail. I could only get one side. On the other side, it looks like a red sore with white fuzzy stuff around it.

pinkfloydpuffer

Well, that sounds like a fungal infection. Is there anything in the tank he could have scraped himself on?

cerianthus

Sorry to hear what happened. For future reference, how about setting QT w/ water from main tank (thus less stress for the fish) when needed. You could even run sponge filter in the main tank for a day or two before setting up QT tank or run it all the time.
When done using for hospital tank, clean it well and sterilize w/ boiling water before adding it back to main tank. May need heater depending on your location. Sponge filter is ran with air pump so you will also have aeration in QT.

Would not be too concern with ammonia at this level since frequent small water change will control the ammonia.
I am curious to your pH, wondering why so high since your fish prefer neutral to slightly acidic water. Since you had the TTeel for a year, I am assuming that your tank was running w/o any massive changes. Was there any changes done to the tank recently, such as changing of substrate or adding any sea shells?
You may be in the area where tap water is hard and alkaline. Run the test on your tap for pH, NH3.

From my experiences, most of the fish that are very slimy, rarely come down with external parasite such as ICK, but it may have parasitic infection to their gills thus have labored breathing.
Be careful w/ med when treating scaleless fish for ICK since very sensitive (even toxic) to most of the Med for external parasite.
Hope rest of the fish are OK.

Oh, one more thing. Ammonia in the water has two different forms. One being Ammonium ion (NH4+, less toxic) and other Ammonia (NH3, toxic). They shift to different forms depending on pH. As ph get more alkaline, more shifts to toxic NH3 form and as pH gets more acidic, more will shift towards less toxic NH4+ form.
At your pH, slight amount of Ammonia is mostly present in more toxic NH3 form.
Monitor and control the Ammonia for the rest of fish. Provided that your tank is stable, it should stay at zero.


Cerianthus

budangel8

No nothing in the tank to scrape him. What I think happened is I purchased a plecko for the tank since right now I don't have one. The next morning when I woke up the plecko was on the bottom of the tank, dead and white. It was the next day I noticed the eels tail was white and a bit fuzzy. Then I started treating with the melafix for the past 5 days and it has gotten worse. I have the primafix and the rid-fungus and I'm just at the point where I need to decide what to do. Do I move the other fish to my mom's tank and treat this tank, do I set up a hospital tank and move the eel and do I treat with primafix alone, treat with primafix along with melafix, or just treat with rid-fungus.

budangel8

There are some plastic logs and coral he could have scraped himself on.

Lucy

I don't know that the the blood worms would break down that quickly to ammonia.
For whatever reason (meds, maybe) you've gone into a mini cycle. It would help him if you did daily water changes in your main tank until the ammonia is back down to 0.

Moving him to a Q tank would be a good idea. I wouldn't use the main tank water since it has ammonia in it and would work against healing your eel.

You can cut a peice of your used filter media and add it to the filter of the Q tank to help seed it with bacteria. You can also use a hand full or two of gravel from your main tank, that will contain beneficial bacteria also.


Edit:
I think you found the source of the problem It looks like the pleco was ill when you bought him and passed whatever he had on to the eel.
It's always a good idea to quarantine new few for at least 2 weeks before introducing them to your tank.

pinkfloydpuffer

Ah, likely the disease came from that pleco...

For future reference, quarantining new fish is a good precaution so diseases don't spread.

Yeah, the meds likely contributed to that spike...

I've never used pimafix or melafix... I think in your situation personally I'd likely use the rid-fungus. And move him to the hospital tank... don't treat the whole big tank, unless all of your fish show signs of sickness, which it doesnt' seem like they are. Perhaps your eel took a bite out of the dead pleco and got sick that way? Maybe...

budangel8

Ok going to setup the hospital tank with new water, some old gravel and media. Which medicine should I treat him with?

Lucy

Rid fungus and Fungus Eliminator are both good medications. It would be a good idea to read up on them first to be sure they won't harm your eel.

budangel8

Didn't even think of that, I will do that before using them. I'll keep checking back for any other suggestions and will keep you all updated on his status. Thank you very much for helping my mom, she's been going crazy over this.

We love our Eels, I have a 15 inch fire eel in my tank and had another before him that jumped the tank. Mom has the better of the 2 eels (personality wise) and we would both hate to lose him.

Lucy

Good luck. We know what it's like to be attached to our aqua babies.

Keep us posted.

Angela_96

I had problems months ago w/ fungus from buying a cichlid, you can treat with pimafix and melafix at the same time. After the 3 day treatment the cichilds fungus went away. The pimafix is great for the fungal infections. I would use both, one for fungal and one for secondary bacterial.

budangel8

We moved him into the hospital tank and treated it with the rid fungus and this morning he doesn't seem to be any better. His movement has become very lethargic and he seems to be very weak. It doesn't look like he's going to make it

pinkfloydpuffer

What's the dosing instructions on the package? Does it say you can repeat treatments?