Velvet looks like the fish has been dusted with
yellowish powder. Glugea is little white lumps
sticking through the skin. There's no way to confuse
them when you see it. Velvet is curable. Glugea isn't
Good luck
Matt
--- Kate Breimayer <kate@munat.com> wrote:
I clean their tank daily and it looks gross every
time. I think the
euthenasia thing is most likely. Don't know the
difference between
glugea and velvet, either way it's gotta go and stay
gone.
Thanks for all the help,
Kate
throatwarbler mangrove wrote:
What's true in nature doesn't necessarily follow in
captivity. If the disease you have is glugea (and
Barry Cooper, who you sent the fish to for necropsy
would know), my suggestion is to terminate all of
them, it's highly contagious to other killies and
there's no treatment. Kill the fish, bleach the
tank.
I believe Barry had to do this at one point and
certainly Dan Katz from Long Island had to do this
with his impressive collection of south american
annuals. It just plain isn't a fun thing to have in
your room. I've bred 10 or so different Nothos and
many S. A. annuals and fortunately avoided the
glugea
plague. Isolation is a very good thing - Dr. Brian
Watters of Vancouver (I think), who is probably the
world's leading expert on Nothobranchius, has a
very
elaborate fishroom that includes a large area for
isolating incoming fish to ensure no nasties come
in
with them. When I was really into fish I always
reserved a tank or two far away from the main fish
setup for isolation of suspicious fish, especially
anything wild caught.
Glugea looks like small white lumps on the fish's
body, it seems to be especially bad for annual
killies
either african (nothos) or south american
("Simpsonichthys" and the ever-growing number of
genera that all used to be "Cynolebias")
As far as velvet goes, velvet likes dirty tanks and
the old timers say sunlight makes it worse. I have
had
it in small crowded tanks and Nothos are a classic
for
that - you hatch out 300 of them and have a 2.5
gallon
tank available for rearing them :-) Tanks get
grubby
really fast. The old-timer notho breeders I knew
all
kept their notho tanks immaculate (and with high
levels of salt, killies can withstand very very
high
levels of salt, seawater strength is no problem as
long as its gradually introduced.)
I've also used acriflavine for velvet - Damn!
That's
*two* fish medications I admit to using today. What
is
going on here... Anyway, I separate out the sick
fish,
treat with acriflavine (which knocks out velvet
boom!
but isn't so good for fish eggs) then reintroduce
and
the fish generally recover. In every case, the tank
was grubby and crowded.
Matt
--- Kate Breimayer <kate@munat.com> wrote:
Nothobranchius killies are seasonal fish, they
live
in temporary pools
and die off every year when they dry up, unless
they
get lucky and have
a wet year. They spawn like crazy and the eggs are
buried in the bottom
of the pools, where they incubate until next
years'
rains, some even
last another season or two in case of drought.
They
grow amazingly
quickly and are usually gorgeous, supposedly the
pools are full of
debris and so difficult to see in that the males
have to be colorful so
the females can find them. Really amazing fish,
but
they are extremely
sensitive to velvet. I apparently don't have a
knack for them. I
contacted a fish pathologist who studies this
group
of fish, he was a
professor at Cornell and he recommended the
flubendazole but also said
the case was most likely hopeless and that I would
most likely have to
euthenize the lot. These fish evolved to live fast
and spawn like crazy,
and die young, they seem to have really cruddy
immune systems. Some
people do great with them though. And I have 3
species here, one never
got sick, another kicked it after treatment, the
third is getting til
the end of the week and then it's euthenasia. I
can't risk splashing
their water into my healthy tanks, or having my
fishsitter contaminate
other tanks with their water while I am out of
town
next week.
Velvet sucks, don't get it. I got it twice from
fish
bought online.
Think it's a good plan to stick to buying fish you
can actually lay your
eyes on first.
I don't normally go in for medicating fish either
but this notho
situation, all the other killie people said
flubendazole was a miracle
drug and it would be a snap to deal with...
Hydra also I have to treat. It really likes my
fry.
Any other fish seem to recover from most things
with
good diet and lots
of water changes, and they seem to be healthier
and
stronger if raised
in a tank with healthy plants. So most of my
killies
are in planted
tanks and get regular changes with chemical free
aged water, and I have
no problems ever with 90% of my fish. Needless to
say I did not send any
Nothobranchius killies to the meeting and will not
be keeping them again
in the future, except for any offspring from the
species that never got
sick in the first place.
Sometimes fishkeeping is less fun that it is at
other times.
Kate
throatwarbler mangrove wrote:
It could be the meds. In my opinion, medicating
fish
rarely works. Sounds like a combo of the rising
salt
and the nasties from 'formalin' did in the plant,
that's not that surprising esp. salt levels.
Also, nothobranchius killies are no less hardy
than
any other fish - I'm sure there's more to it than
the
type of fish. But, I expect we'll hear plenty
about
killies tomorrow night.
--- Kate Breimayer <kate@munat.com> wrote:
It was the mother plant for a bunch of them, It
was
doing fine for
probably a year in my tanks, and the person I
got
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