Skinny Endler Females

I have a ton of endlers, but only a handful in my display -- around 8 males and 7 or so females. I know the numbers are out of whack, but I had to wait to move the rest of the females over this week. This has resulted in the females being a little more stressed than I'd like as a flock of males will focus on one for a while, and the ones not being chased tend to hide.

I do have two females who are starting to worry me though, because of how slender they are. I got used to endler females plumping up, releasing a load of fry, being slender for a few days then starting to plump up again. But these two seem to be perpetually thin. One is one of the original 3 female endler I bought back in June, and to the best of my knowledge she has never gotten pregnant. (The other two between them are responsible for at least 80% of my current population). She has been hiding a LOT. The other one is from one of the first generations, and has been behaving pretty normally, or at least as normal as the others. Is it possible for female endler to be infertile (I mean, I assume yes?), or could something else be going on?

They're the two in the foreground (upper-leftish is the young one, center-right yellow one is the elder), with a more normal female below and to the right.

 

They could just be getting old, but I would keep a close eye on them to see if they get bullied by males more than others, and check to see if they get enough food

 

The elder female had passed when I came home Tuesday. I went to an aquarist club meeting that night and asked around--no one had any good suggestions as to what might be going on with these two. I will be asking at the lfs I purchased the group from tonight.

I tried to have the remaining female isolated in the breeder box to make sure she was getting enough food. I suspect she isn't, since she spit out the bug bites I dropped in, despite not being harrassed since she was alone. When I came back later though, she had figured out how to jump out of the box and was back with everyone else.

I guess we'll see...

 

And I'm pretty sure the younger female died sometime yesterday. She had been in some distress (mouth opening and closing like crazy) the night before, but I couldn't get her out. By the time I got home from work, there wasn't much left between the work the snails and the loaches did, so...I think it was her, and really hope she wasn't carrying something contagious. Everyone else still looks fine. I didn't want to add any additional females to the tank while dealing with these two, but now that they're gone I will watch for another day, then add in more females to distract the endler males.

I also trimmed up many of the plants in the aquarium to give me a better shot at netting anyone else immediately if they have the same symptoms.

I still haven't found any answers to what may have caused this, but it could be "Livebearer Wasting Disease" which is caused by a parasite. Levamisole HCI seems to be the go-to cure, but some people have used API General Cure with good results since Levamisole HCI is hard to get. I found some through subquaria though at a fairly reasonable price, and so am purchasing it and intend to treat all my setups with it. This is what I get for not having strong quarantine practices, but unfortunately with how everything is right now (i.e. filled with endler and in the process of trying to get from 6 aquariums down to 3 for the winter), that wasn't possible. So instead I bought from a place that did the quarantine for me, and...*shrugs*. This seems to be another thing which only shows up in stressed fish, so it's likely that it was the skewed male/female endler ratio which was behind it showing up in these girls. But now that I know it's there, it's best to get rid of it once and for all, and hopefully solve the stress issues at the same time.

Levamisole

 

I have so many Endlers, and from time to time, I have some, both male and female, that are just born rather weak and skinny. They never fill out and die young. I didn't realize that there was a "wasting disease," but that's exactly what I call it ("tísico" in Spanish because they have that 19th-century consumptive look). Their parents and most of their siblings look fine, so I didn't think that it was a parasite but rather just weak individuals that would have died very young in the wild. Even as newborns, their chests look hollow, and they have a very different profile from the rest.

 

And I'm pretty sure the younger female died sometime yesterday. She had been in some distress (mouth opening and closing like crazy) the night before, but I couldn't get her out. By the time I got home from work, there wasn't much left between the work the snails and the loaches did, so...I think it was her, and really hope she wasn't carrying something contagious. Everyone else still looks fine. I didn't want to add any additional females to the tank while dealing with these two, but now that they're gone I will watch for another day, then add in more females to distract the endler males.

I also trimmed up many of the plants in the aquarium to give me a better shot at netting anyone else immediately if they have the same symptoms.

I still haven't found any answers to what may have caused this, but it could be "Livebearer Wasting Disease" which is caused by a parasite. Levamisole HCI seems to be the go-to cure, but some people have used API General Cure with good results since Levamisole HCI is hard to get. I found some through subquaria though at a fairly reasonable price, and so am purchasing it and intend to treat all my setups with it. This is what I get for not having strong quarantine practices, but unfortunately with how everything is right now (i.e. filled with endler and in the process of trying to get from 6 aquariums down to 3 for the winter), that wasn't possible. So instead I bought from a place that did the quarantine for me, and...*shrugs*. This seems to be another thing which only shows up in stressed fish, so it's likely that it was the skewed male/female endler ratio which was behind it showing up in these girls. But now that I know it's there, it's best to get rid of it once and for all, and hopefully solve the stress issues at the same time.

Levamisole

HI I have had endlers and guppies with what appears to be wasting disease. They are weak, skinny, and seem to have the guppy "shimmy". My experience is that these thin endlers are prone to picking up other diseases in the tank. I have used General cure from API, and it did seem to help/work. I found Levamisole on ebay from Subquaria, and it is about $22 shipped. I used it to treat calumanus worms in my angelfish. I will try it in my mixed endler tank if I notice more sickly endlers. Good Luck, Lisa.

 

I checked my other tanks yesterday, and have some endlers who are decidedly thin--they weren't last week, or the tanks are so overgrown I may have missed them. Additionally at least one had white, stringy poo hanging down. So I spent most of yesterday transferring as many as I could catch downstairs to the tub, and catch the rest and dose the lot this afternoon with the levamisole, along with the upstairs aquarium. I know I should have probably treated them in their aquariums without the stress of moving them all around, but since they all obviously have it, and I wanted to make sure that I had enough of the medication to do several doses if needed. And they all needed to be moved--the room the 10g's are in is poorly heated and the window is getting a LOT of condensation, so I'm worried about mold.

The only quandry is that Levamisole has the advisory that "There is a chance a small percentage of the weaker snails may not survive after treatment." Searches on the internet haven't provided a definitive answer as to if aquarium snails can harbor the worms which cause livebearer wasting disease -- in the endler tanks I have ramshorn, bladder, malasian trumpets, and in one I have a single nerite. Petcha does say that "Similarly, snails can act as important vectors for disease organisms. Many types of snails are known to share their shells with leaches, planarians and other nasty customers. The Malaysian Trumpet Snail is known to harbor a type of trematode parasite that has adversely effected wild populations of the endangered Fountain Darter."

I have been losing ramshorn frequently in all of my setups for the past few months (which is a shame, since those are actually my favorites despite their breeding out of control.), and so it might be related, or something else. They could just be self-correcting for their population explosion, especially when having to compete with the nerite and MTS. I'm tempted to transfer as many as I can to a 5 gallon bucket, dose that, and then move the survivors back into a sand-bottom aquarium.

I might start a second thread for snail-owner's experience with levamisole and snails. And I won't be absolutely heartbroken to lose a few (although I am fond of the nerites). But still, I like to limit causalities when I can.

 

Lost one more girl after I started the treatment--she'd been super-skinny right before, and spitting out her food. I didn't find her until I went to drain the tank for the 75% water change, because part of the instructions are to keep the tank lights off for 48hrs, and so I didn't see her at first, but noticed a slight ammonia reading on my sensors (I have the Seachem stick-on sensors, and REALLY happy I got those!), so I knew to look for someone dead. I had issues with the water change (link to thread), but hopefully I didn't stress the fish too much, and everyone else bounces back.

I still have a billion snails, and newborn endler fry, so I'm really hopeful. A few of the males are skinny, but no one looks as sunken-bellied as the diseased girls did. Crossing my fingers that this is the end of it for now.

 

Hope the worst is over...

 

Lost one more girl after I started the treatment--she'd been super-skinny right before, and spitting out her food. I didn't find her until I went to drain the tank for the 75% water change, because part of the instructions are to keep the tank lights off for 48hrs, and so I didn't see her at first, but noticed a slight ammonia reading on my sensors (I have the Seachem stick-on sensors, and REALLY happy I got those!), so I knew to look for someone dead. I had issues with the water change (link to thread), but hopefully I didn't stress the fish too much, and everyone else bounces back.

I still have a billion snails, and newborn endler fry, so I'm really hopeful. A few of the males are skinny, but no one looks as sunken-bellied as the diseased girls did. Crossing my fingers that this is the end of it for now.

HI Lacey! I recently treated my 55 gallon endler tank with Levamisole when I saw evidence of camallanus worms. I treated the tank, and I have not seen any worms since. I did not lose any snails, and I have many mystery snails in the tank. I still have many fry, so I don't know if I lost any of them. I do not regret treating the tank, as I believe the random deaths I have been experiencing in this tank were related to the worm's destroying the fish's health. I have noticed the fish seem more energetic and hungry! I hope you notice the same. Best, Lisa.

 

Apparently it's NOT over--another girl developed swim bladder issues today, and so I've moved her to a breeder box to fast her, but don't have a lot of hope. She doesn't have the skinny/sunken profile that the other ill females did, but she's also not noticeably bloated. She's gone from being wobbly to hovering nose-down in just a few hours. She did have some feces hanging off her at one point, but it was stringy and white (maybe passing the dead parasites, I hope?).

She could be the mother of the latest batch of tiny fry in the main display and experiencing issues with that, or it could be stress since the male/female ratio is still way off. I plan on pulling ALL the girls out tonight when I do a water change, and putting them in a hospital tank.

Parameters are--Ammonia: 0.5; Nitrite: 0, Nitrate: 5. pH is 7.6-7.8 (need to do a high pH test to narrow it down). I think the ammonia is because I have some plants with dying leaves in the tank, which I will also clean up tonight. I also noticed last night that the food I feed a lot--Bug Bites Tropical Formula for Small Fish--was being spit out by many of the endler. Not sure what that was about, and hadn't noticed it before, but I gave everyone else a spirula/brine shrimp frozen cube instead.

I will also add that ALL the girls which have passed are blondes. Which might point to some issue/deficiency with them, although I've never heard of anything like that.

 

UPDATE, and possibly the last: The female with the swim bladder issue did pass, although it took days Fasting her didn't seem to help at all.
After she passed, I pulled the surviving three females from the display and put them into my mostly female tank. I have seen no casualties since. I will dose again with the levamisole as per the instructions. Hopefully the worse is behind me <3

 

UPDATE: Since treating the second time, and removing all the females to a 90% female setup downstairs, I haven't lost a single girl. HOWEVER a few of my males in the main display started getting very skinny. A few weeks later my oldest male, one of the 2 males I started with, died. There are a few others which are also skinny and looking poorly. I tried calling a local exotic vet for a consult, but have yet to hear back.

So I went to my lfs (where I got the endler) and asked them for advice. And they said that sometimes they see it as well, but in their opinion in endlers it is a combination of 1)inbreeding, 2)age and 3)some other genetic weakness. They said they see it mostly in females right after they drop a brood, and in the larger male endler. Now the old endler who passed was small, but he was my very first and who knows how old he actually was when I bought him in June (6/2/18), since he was a full adult. And he was showing all the signs of an OLD guppy/endler, not necessarily a diseased one. The other one which is also very skinny was from my first drop of fry, born 5 days after I bought my endler in mid-June (6/7/18), so he's nearly 6 months old. Which isn't old for an endler EXCEPT that he's one of my largest boys, and came from back when I was running my aquariums too hot, and massively overfeeding. It could be a combination of basically forced maturation, and maybe a parasitic infection causing stress and early mortality.

All the rest of the fish in this aquarium are fine (although the betta needs to be pulled out. I put her back in for the treatment, and she's trying to eat herself to death again). I now have 7 kuhlI loaches, and 4 bristlenose pleco (all very immature), along with the betta and around 10 endler males.

So HOPEFULLY I am now just dealing with old age and a lack of knowledge about endler when I started this hobby, instead of any actual parasite.

 

I had guppies for years.
The sunken skeletal look in mine was always due to just old age/poor breeding.

Keep an eye on the ones you know the age of, I suspect that they were just old and worn out dear.

Sorry to hear about your losses though. Never fun to have to say goodbye.
You may wish to add some new genetics to the population as well.
Perhaps trade with another keeper local to you? You said you're a member of a group, that would be your best bet IMHO.

I don't think they were ill, or in need of treatment.
They, presumably, just hit the end of their lifespan.