Red Bases of Fins/Frayed, Bulging Eye, Blindness - Septicemia?

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bjbass

Candiru
MFK Member
Apr 10, 2010
536
5
48
PA
I have a 210 gallon freshwater tank that I have been dealing with some kind of disease in two of my peacock bass. I have three peacock bass (two of which are maybe 10" and one is about 6"), an Oscar, a 20" brown bullhead catfish, a 10" snow king pleco, and about a 20" silver aro. This has been ongoing for probably about a year and it gets better and seems to come back. The two peacocks that have this have frayed pectoral fins with red bases that seems to maybe be fin rot and sometimes their sides sort of get streaks where the slime coat is kind of missing. My one larger peacock seems to have a bulging eye now that I will post pictures of and the other smaller one seems to be temporarily blind. He misses food when it comes past him and he goes to the bottom to sniff it out and opens his mouth to shovel it off the bottom and misses repeatedly. The large peacock at times has labored breathing.

This tank has been running since 2009 which was originally a native tank where I had sunfish and a smallmouth bass. That smallmouth way back then had fin rot that I cleared up with salt. I know that native fish in Pennsylvania can have VHS which sort of fits the bill for this particular disease that I see today as Septicemia seems to be the closest description I can find.

I have been using aquarium salt which seems to keep it at bay and I also do about a 30-50% water change every two weeks. I then use prime before filling the tank and API stress coat.

Here are my water parameters today:
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 0ppm
PH: 6 or lower (API test kit is lowest at 6) We have very soft city water where I live.
 
I will look into this over the next couple of days. I don't have my disease textbook here at work but I'm sure we can figure out some possibilities.

The symptoms do resemble VHS, but to my knowledge it hasn't yet been reported in cichlids before. That's not to say that it can't, but if your fish has it then someone should publish a paper on it! I will have to look into it but those symptoms are nonspecific - they can apply to a number of diseases. I do know that cichlids can get megalocytivirus, but the symptoms aren't enough to say for sure.

I am curious about your pH being so low. Do you know your alkalinity or KH? Even if your water supply is low in pH it may need to be amended. I am also curious how much of the low pH is attributable to CO2. pH can affect how well certain medications will work.

If you want to get really serious about saving the group and you are willing to spend a couple hundred dollars, you can bring one to a fish vet. They will sacrifice a fish to give you a firm diagnosis. Then your chances of helping your other fish is better. I'm not sure where in PA you live, but I know a veterinary student that is about to graduate from UPenn. She is specializing in fish and, although her experience is mostly with catfish and sturgeon, she will definitely be able to take samples and analyze them under a microscope. If she's willing that is. I haven't asked her. She might not even charge you for all I know.
 
Pomatomus said:
I will look into this over the next couple of days. I don't have my disease textbook here at work but I'm sure we can figure out some possibilities.

The symptoms do resemble VHS, but to my knowledge it hasn't yet been reported in cichlids before. That's not to say that it can't, but if your fish has it then someone should publish a paper on it! I will have to look into it but those symptoms are nonspecific - they can apply to a number of diseases. I do know that cichlids can get megalocytivirus, but the symptoms aren't enough to say for sure.

I am curious about your pH being so low. Do you know your alkalinity or KH? Even if your water supply is low in pH it may need to be amended. I am also curious how much of the low pH is attributable to CO2. pH can affect how well certain medications will work.

If you want to get really serious about saving the group and you are willing to spend a couple hundred dollars, you can bring one to a fish vet. They will sacrifice a fish to give you a firm diagnosis. Then your chances of helping your other fish is better. I'm not sure where in PA you live, but I know a veterinary student that is about to graduate from UPenn. She is specializing in fish and, although her experience is mostly with catfish and sturgeon, she will definitely be able to take samples and analyze them under a microscope. If she's willing that is. I haven't asked her. She might not even charge you for all I know.
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Thank you for your well thought out and detailed reply! I am in Central PA in Lewisburg, PA. UPenn is about 2.5 hours or so from me.

I have a test kit for alk and KH so I will do that later today and get you the results. The pH in my tank has always been low like that and I have added crushed oyster shells into my sump, but they haven't made a difference. I used to have them in one of my overflows, but now i just have them sitting in a bag in the sump. I wonder if I need to use something else or put more of them in somewhere?

That is really interesting that VHS hasn't been reported in cichlids yet. It is very possible though that it has been present in my tank for years and certain fish were hosts of it and passed it on, or it was living somewhere in my tank. I euthanized my last natives do to illness probably about a year ago as I was transitioning to a cichlid tank.
 
I haven't tested my Kh, but here are some more pics of my Azul that is getting worse.







 
Charney said:
I would worry about Aeromonas infection
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Well that does worry me since that can be transferred to humans...

I lost both my azul peacock and my smaller cichla pinima peacock and my snow king pleco :( :( The rest of the fish since have been fine.

I still have my aro, oscar, bullhead, and kelberi
 
Charney said:
I would worry about Aeromonas infection
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Any chance of treatment for this? I had this problem sometime back and I bleached all my tanks and now i see a totally new tank has this symptoms with one of my 6" Azul bass out of nowhere.
 
Look up the effects of low pH on nitrification process. (New tank syndrome)

Especially if you are getting zero nitrate readings.
 
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