Help Diagnose - Cherub Angelfish Stopped Eating/Heavy Breathing

[mdt21]

Please help me. My cherub suddenly stopped eating for the last 4 days and only today did it start breathing heavy. There are no exterior signs of disease.
My angelfish has been in the tank for a little over a year. It was the second last fish I introduced, right before my Janns pipefish. I cannot quarantine my fish and my angelfish is wild caught, but none of my fish have shown any signs of disease.
I feed all my fish twice a day with a mix of frozen Ocean Nutrition brine, mysis, copepods, and sometimes ON veggie flakes. I rarely add a bit of selcon, maybe once a month.

Let me provide some more background information on my tank:

2.5 year old tank, 30 gallons
Full of soft and lps corals, all thriving and healthy. Dosing AFR with weekly aminos.
Other tank mates include a Chromis, Mandarin dragonet, Janns pipefish and a Randall's goby - no new fish added recently.
UV running 24/7
Skimmer running half the day
Chaeto reactor running at night

Parameters
KH 8.5
Ca 410
Mg 1350
NO3 1 - 2 ppm
PO4 0.12 - 0.15 ppm

There have been no changes in anything. My tank has been running stable for a while now. I did add a black sun coral about a week ago. It came in with no frag plug, and I did not dip because I have had negative experiences dipping sun corals (they always die when I dip them). Also didn't see anything on it, so I just gave it a wash and added it in.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Please help me. My cherub suddenly stopped eating for the last 4 days and only today did it start breathing heavy. There are no exterior signs of disease.
My angelfish has been in the tank for a little over a year. It was the second last fish I introduced, right before my Janns pipefish. I cannot quarantine my fish and my angelfish is wild caught, but none of my fish have shown any signs of disease.
I feed all my fish twice a day with a mix of frozen Ocean Nutrition brine, mysis, copepods, and sometimes ON veggie flakes. I rarely add a bit of selcon, maybe once a month.

Let me provide some more background information on my tank:

2.5 year old tank, 30 gallons
Full of soft and lps corals, all thriving and healthy. Dosing AFR with weekly aminos.
Other tank mates include a Chromis, Mandarin dragonet, Janns pipefish and a Randall's goby - no new fish added recently.
UV running 24/7
Skimmer running half the day
Chaeto reactor running at night

Parameters
KH 8.5
Ca 410
Mg 1350
NO3 1 - 2 ppm
PO4 0.12 - 0.15 ppm

There have been no changes in anything. My tank has been running stable for a while now. I did add a black sun coral about a week ago. It came in with no frag plug, and I did not dip because I have had negative experiences dipping sun corals (they always die when I dip them). Also didn't see anything on it, so I just gave it a wash and added it in.

Pics are very dark and best under white light intensity only but preliminarily may be ich
Assure water quality is good
A you tube video also works

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Please help me. My cherub suddenly stopped eating for the last 4 days and only today did it start breathing heavy. There are no exterior signs of disease.
My angelfish has been in the tank for a little over a year. It was the second last fish I introduced, right before my Janns pipefish. I cannot quarantine my fish and my angelfish is wild caught, but none of my fish have shown any signs of disease.
I feed all my fish twice a day with a mix of frozen Ocean Nutrition brine, mysis, copepods, and sometimes ON veggie flakes. I rarely add a bit of selcon, maybe once a month.

Let me provide some more background information on my tank:

2.5 year old tank, 30 gallons
Full of soft and lps corals, all thriving and healthy. Dosing AFR with weekly aminos.
Other tank mates include a Chromis, Mandarin dragonet, Janns pipefish and a Randall's goby - no new fish added recently.
UV running 24/7
Skimmer running half the day
Chaeto reactor running at night

Parameters
KH 8.5
Ca 410
Mg 1350
NO3 1 - 2 ppm
PO4 0.12 - 0.15 ppm

There have been no changes in anything. My tank has been running stable for a while now. I did add a black sun coral about a week ago. It came in with no frag plug, and I did not dip because I have had negative experiences dipping sun corals (they always die when I dip them). Also didn't see anything on it, so I just gave it a wash and added it in.

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

Having those symptoms in a long term captive is very rare, most diseases don’t live in aquariums for that long before making the fish acutely ill. Also, gill diseases would cause the fish to start breathing faster and then stop eating, not the other way around.

What other fish are in the tank with the angel? No symptoms with them?

Jay

 

[mdt21]

Pics are very dark and best under white light intensity only but preliminarily may be ich
Assure water quality is good
A you tube video also works

I'll try to get a youtube vid or pictures under white light soon. If it is ich, there are no visible white spots on the fish. What does good water quality mean here? I did share my tank overview above, is there something wrong with it? I assume ammonia and nitrite are zero because nothing has died in the tank.

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

Having those symptoms in a long term captive is very rare, most diseases don’t live in aquariums for that long before making the fish acutely ill. Also, gill diseases would cause the fish to start breathing faster and then stop eating, not the other way around.

What other fish are in the tank with the angel? No symptoms with them?

Jay

Hi Jay,
Thank you for commenting. For more clarification, this started 4 days ago. At first, it just ate much less than usual. After day 2, it stopped eating. Today (day 4), I noticed it is now breathing heavy. At first, I thought it was maybe constipation or bloat, because my cherub does love to eat a lot. I wanted to wait it out, but the heavy breathing today has got me worried.

The other fish in my tank are a chromis, a mandarin goby, a pair of janns pipefish, 1 randall's goby. Inverts include some turbo snails, hermits, a porcelain crab, a cleaner shrimp. No symptoms, still acting and eating fine.

The last livestock I added in were the pair of janns about 8 months ago. Before that, it was the cherub angelfish, which was about 14 - 16 months ago.

As stated above, I did add a suncoral last week that I did not dip because it didn't have a frag plug and looked clean. ime, sun corals can't handle a dip with Revive, so it was the main reason I didn't dip. I did give the coral a rinse and swish, but a possibility something hitched on the skin of the coral? I'm not sure. I'll upload some better pictures/video tomorrow when I can. Please check back later. I really appreciate any insight or feedback you can provide. Thank you.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I'll try to get a youtube vid or pictures under white light soon. If it is ich, there are no visible white spots on the fish. What does good water quality mean here? I did share my tank overview above, is there something wrong with it? I assume ammonia and nitrite are zero because nothing has died in the tank.


Hi Jay,
Thank you for commenting. For more clarification, this started 4 days ago. At first, it just ate much less than usual. After day 2, it stopped eating. Today (day 4), I noticed it is now breathing heavy. At first, I thought it was maybe constipation or bloat, because my cherub does love to eat a lot. I wanted to wait it out, but the heavy breathing today has got me worried.

The other fish in my tank are a chromis, a mandarin goby, a pair of janns pipefish, 1 randall's goby. Inverts include some turbo snails, hermits, a porcelain crab, a cleaner shrimp. No symptoms, still acting and eating fine.

The last livestock I added in were the pair of janns about 8 months ago. Before that, it was the cherub angelfish, which was about 14 - 16 months ago.

As stated above, I did add a suncoral last week that I did not dip because it didn't have a frag plug and looked clean. ime, sun corals can't handle a dip with Revive, so it was the main reason I didn't dip. I did give the coral a rinse and swish, but a possibility something hitched on the skin of the coral? I'm not sure. I'll upload some better pictures/video tomorrow when I can. Please check back later. I really appreciate any insight or feedback you can provide. Thank you.

The sun coral could have brought something into the tank, but that is pretty fast onset. Also, the tank that coral came from would have had to have had an active disease going on, fish with the same symptoms as your angelfish.

 

[mdt21]

The sun coral could have brought something into the tank, but that is pretty fast onset. Also, the tank that coral came from would have had to have had an active disease going on, fish with the same symptoms as your angelfish.

Hi Jay,

Update time:

Sick Cherub (sorry, I don't know how to post without it being a YT short)

First, here's the best I could do with a video of the cherub angel. It won't come out of hiding, so forgive the quality. It's still behaving the same as it did yesterday.

Secondly, today I noticed that there is a reddish bump inside the mouth, on the roof. You can actually see it in the video pretty clearly. I never noticed it before, at least not something that big and red. It's most visible around 0:10-0:14s mark, but you can see it from the beginning of the video.

Do you know of any parasites or diseases that could explain this red bump? Any suggestions on what to do next?

Aside from disease and parasites, the only thing I can think of is a piece of bristleworm stuck on the roof of the mouth, causing the fish discomfort. Maybe I should try catching it and try inspecting it further? Just a theory, I don't know what that bump could be. Also never seen my angelfish eat a bristleworm before, but who knows.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Hi Jay,

Update time:

Sick Cherub (sorry, I don't know how to post without it being a YT short)

First, here's the best I could do with a video of the cherub angel. It won't come out of hiding, so forgive the quality. It's still behaving the same as it did yesterday.

Secondly, today I noticed that there is a reddish bump inside the mouth, on the roof. You can actually see it in the video pretty clearly. I never noticed it before, at least not something that big and red. It's most visible around 0:10-0:14s mark, but you can see it from the beginning of the video.

Do you know of any parasites or diseases that could explain this red bump? Any suggestions on what to do next?

Aside from disease and parasites, the only thing I can think of is a piece of bristleworm stuck on the roof of the mouth, causing the fish discomfort. Maybe I should try catching it and try inspecting it further? Just a theory, I don't know what that bump could be. Also never seen my angelfish eat a bristleworm before, but who knows.

This video shows me something that was not visible in the earlier pictures - this fish has severe edema, a swelling of the tissues with fluids. The red bump may or may not be related, but the edema is the main issue. The edema is caused by liver or kidney failure. Sorry, but there is nothing that can be done for this in fish. The causes can be varied - tumors, bacterial disease or even fatty liver disease. When the edema becomes systemic, the fish stops eating and begins to breath faster. This is typically not contagious.

Jay

 

[mdt21]

This video shows me something that was not visible in the earlier pictures - this fish has severe edema, a swelling of the tissues with fluids. The red bump may or may not be related, but the edema is the main issue. The edema is caused by liver or kidney failure. Sorry, but there is nothing that can be done for this in fish. The causes can be varied - tumors, bacterial disease or even fatty liver disease. When the edema becomes systemic, the fish stops eating and begins to breath faster. This is typically not contagious.

Jay

Hi Jay,

My cherub has always been large looking. It has always eaten more than its share of food and got really fat. My other fish are shy, so I always feed more to make sure the others get their fill.

However, I agree that the cherub is looking more bloated than usual, but I didn't realize this was edema. It never occurred to me, but what you say makes a lot of sense. Since it always ate so much, could the angelfish have gotten obese, then got liver or kidney failure from being overweight? I feel awful now. I feel this might have been my fault for overfeeding the fish.

Is there anything I could do to ease the suffering? Or just hope that the fish can recover on its own? Thank you for all your help so far.