Livebearer fish rubbing

[fishfever]

Tank Size: 26g
Age of the tank: about 1 month
pH: 7.0
Ammonia: 0
NitrAtes: 30ppm
nitrites: 0
GH/KH: ~200ppm/140ppm (using Wonder shells/ph buffer)
Temperature: 80.5
Fish:

1 adult molly
2 juvenile mollies
2 adult platys
lots of baby platys raised from fry (temporary, plan to give most away)
8 tetras
3 cory catfish

Symptoms:

Have been noticing belly rubbing/bouncing behavior off of aquarium decorations with one of the adult mollies, one juvenile molly (introduced into tank 2 weeks ago) and 1 adult platy. I also saw a baby platy doing the same thing today (about 3 times in a row).

I am suspicious that whatever this is came from the baby molly we added two weeks ago (did not isolate it). It seemed fine the first week but yesterday saw it rub 5 times in a row. I've only seen the others do this sporadically but I'm noticing it more and more as I watch for this behavior. Since both affected mollies are white it is very hard to detect if there are any white spots on them - I don't see anything. I cannot see any spots on the red adult platy that exhibits this behavior. I haven't seen this behavior from any of the tetras or catfish (yet). All of the fish including the affected ones behave normally otherwise with good appetites and normal breathing/movement.

The only diseases I find associated with rubbing are ich and velvet but I can't see anything detectable on the fish. Could this be an early warning with no visible symptoms? Is it advisable to treat anyway? Should I move the fish that seem affected to an isolation tank and treat? I read that the tetras and catfish (which don't seem affected yet) are extra sensitive to medication. The only thing I've done so far (yesterday) was do a 15% water change with some extra salt.

[bikeguy33]

very very often ornament rubbing is from a parasitic infestation. if that is the case, treatment of the tank will almost for sure to be necessary...

[goldenpuon]

It could very likely be ich or another parasite. But you said you saw nothing on the fish. I have had ich not appear in fish and show up the next day. Keep an eye out and seperate/medicate if necessary.

I have actually had something similar happen with my guppies which are livebearers also. They randomly started belly-rubbing on the bottom of the tank. They'd sometimes do it as a group, always doing it in a certain spot in their tank. I panicked at first when I saw this and tried treating them for ich but nothing happened and they continued. They also had no spots of any kind on them. Since then, they have started doing it again on and off but nothing has never come of it.

Not that I'm saying they are not sick. I am just saying that the rubbing like mine were is a slight possibility of what might be going on.

Best of luck!

Renee

[fishfever]

Renee, what did you use to treat for ich? It would be nice to use something that also gets rid of velvet in case it's that (actually it seems more likely since if there are spots, they are too darn small for me to see!).

When I had a small 10g tank, I had a fish that wasn't eating so I assumed it was sick. I moved it to a small hospital tank and treated it with something called Lifeguard by Jungle Labs. Turned out the "sick" fish was actually just pregnant and I ended up with a bunch of fry so I don't know if this medication works or not. The reason I bought it was that it claimed to be an all-in-one treatment and since I had no idea what was wrong I figured it was my best bet instead of guessing. I ended up using the rest of the medication as a preventative measure when I added new fish as recommended on the package. The tablet dissolves in a small floating net in a few hours and you add one tablet per day. There were no side effects that I noticed but I have no idea if it's effective against ich or many other fish diseases listed on the package (does not mention velvet). If I used it now I'd have to remove the catfish since it's not suitable for scaleless fish (if it's really ich, wouldn't they be the most susceptible?).

[goldenpuon]

If memory serves, I used Ich Clear by Jungle Lab. But my fish didn't have ich in the first place when I gave it to them so my treatment proved unnecessary. I also have learned since then that Ich Clear well still sometimes effective is not the best Ich medication out there. Paraguard is more effective. Also, MB baths with salt work well.

I'm afraid I don't know about the catfish. I have only kept a very limited # of fish species. You might have better luck finding which meds are best in Carl's articles.

What I do know is not to dump a bunch of meds in there just if your fish are acting strange. Unless there is white spots or a definite sign they are sick at this point, I wouldn't treat quite yet.

Are there any other symtoms besides itching and the one fish not eating? Ich shouldn't be hard to spot. Use a magnifying glass if you need to. Itching also does not mean it is ich. There can be a many diseases that can cause fish will itch and it is not always disease related.

I guess what I am saying is don't treat until you have a better idea of what is going on with your fish.

Best of luck!

Renee

[Carl]

As noted, this is possibly a symptom of Velvet or Ich, often Velvet is more difficult to see.

Shimmy is another similar condition that Mollies can get.

Copper Sulfate such as Aquarisol is excellent for Velvet and Shimmy. As well Medicated Wonder Shells can work here, although not as concentrated.

I am surprised by your low pH with your KH at 140 and with the use of a buffer. I do not like chasing pH, but you might consider simply adding more buffer each time you change water.

Increasing salt is also often very helpful for this, as well Mollies can tolerate quite a bit of salt (more than most parasites such as Velvet can)

Also see this article:
Aquarium Answers; Velvet

Carl

[fishfever]

Still only seeing the rubbing off aquarium decorations. Some of the fish seem to twist in a certain direction before rubbing so I have been trying to compare the side they scrape versus the other side. Turning out the lights and using a flashlight seems to help but I still haven't seen anything definitive as of yet. Plus two of the fish affected are white mollies so trying to find a small white spot on them is a challenge.

Carl, I have seen Shimmy in mollies (in some shops it seems half of the mollies are wobbling) and our 3 mollies definitely don't do this. I am not ruling out Velvet though since the spots are fine and I don't see any larger spots associated with Ich. I have a number of small medicated Wonder shells intended for the hospital tank but don't have a large one. Probably need to order a few. I think the reason the pH might be a bit low is I'm also using a Bio Almond leaf packet in one of the HOB filters. I can't remember what you told me exactly but I think it was to help buffer simultaneously in the other direction for the tetras, who prefer slightly acidic water? I have been slowly increasing the amount of Malawi buffer I add with each water change to get our 6.2-6.4 pH tap water to at least a balanced condition.

There are a bunch of favorable reviews on Quick Cure by Aquarium Products on Petco's web site but almost all of them had Ich and I don't see any spots. However it's supposed to effectively treat Velvet also.

My doctor once told me 80% of the time if you do nothing you will get better by yourself, 15% he could prescribe something and make it better and 5% he could prescribe something and make it alot worse. I'm trying to avoid being in that 5% so for now I'll just watch and wait.

[bikeguy33]

if this is velvet, it will need to be treated with a copper based med asap. velvet is very fatal and quite quickly fatal. do your flashlight trick and add pics if you can. with oodinium, by the time you actually see the damage it is too late....

keep in mind, all scaless fish, snails will have to be removed or the copper will need to be used at a much less amount. copper is also a med that is never to be overdosed. the bottle will tell you the max volume....DO NOT EXCEED

[kagome]

If you had ich it would definitely show up on your catfish. Pretty much all scaleless fish tend to be more prone to ich and other skin parasites and if they are infected you can see the spots very clearly. I would tend to think that you don't have ich based on the simple facts that you do add salt to your aquariums and your temperature is at or above 80 degrees. These are very unfavorable conditions for ich. Sorry that I can't give a definitive answer as to what if anything is wrong with your fish, but at least I do think you can eliminate ich from the list.

[fishfever]

I've seen an increase in the fish that are rubbing tonight so I think it's time to take action. I'm pretty sure I can rule out Ich at this point. Something I did a week ago may have caused poor water conditions for a few days. I discovered a baby fry caught in the intake of my backup filter that doesn't have a prefilter. To give any other baby fry a chance to survive I turned off the backup filter. At the same time I had a severe block in my main filter (which I've probably had for a while but didn't notice) that I discovered and fixed today so the filtration rate was probably horrible for 3-4 days. So it's possible the poor water over those few days could have led to this or at least made it worse.

I'm really beginning to think it's an internal parasite like gill flukes? maybe since I can't see anything on the fish like spots, not even small ones. Tomorrow I think I'll pick up a few packages of Jungle "Parasite Clear Tank Buddies" which is supposed to get rid of both internal and external parasites. It also claims not to affect your biological filter so it's just a matter of dropping them tablets in the tank.

[Carl]

I have my doubts that this is Ich.

Your point about Gill Flukes is a good one, for a bath using Potassium Permanganate and 2 teaspoons of salt per gallon of bath water would be helpful for this AND Velvet. Substituting Methylene Blue in the bath is fine for Velvet, but less effective for Flukes.
Often with white fish you can see that the gills are more red than normal

The Jungle Parasite Clear Tank Buddies can help for the Flukes (if this is the problem), while the bath is helpful for both, as is increasing the salt in the tank.

Back to Velvet; Quick Cure can works, although my results are not as good as Copper or Copper based products (Medicated Wonder Shells have Copper and Acriflavin, both proven ingredients for Velvet).

See these articles:
Aquarium Answers; Fish Parasites, Nematodes and Trematodes (Flukes)

Aquarium Answers; Velvet

Carl

[fishfever]

Here's what I ended up doing. I used the Jungle Parasite Clear Tank Buddies for 75 hours. This is more than the 24 hours they recommend (it's not on the package but I called Jungle Labs). I asked if more than 24 hours would hurt and they said no so I kept it going for 3 days with the carbon removed. Gradually there was less and less rubbing noticed. But even after 3 days I saw an occasional rub. I did a partial water change after 75 hours and replaced the carbon. For the next few days I saw rubbing every now and then but less and less. Now after more than a week I don't notice any rubbing whenver I watch. I also installed the Terminator UV sterilizer kit from Carl's store during the 75 hour period so I don't know if that was able to help that quickly. I bought the kit so it only took a few minutes to install.

I also noticed some rubbing for some baby fish in the 10g fry tank. We had found a few baby mollies in the main tank so I moved all 3 mollies to this tank for 2 days which probably contaminated it with the same pests causing the rubbing. In this tank I dropped 3 small medicated Wonder shells and did not see any more rubbing after just a few hours. It probably helped that the contamination was not as intense in this tank and I was able to catch the problem earlier but my sense is that the Wonder shells seemed more effective than the ingredients in the Jungle Labs Parasite Clear (subjective).

I still don't know what it was exactly because there were never any visible spots (even small ones) and I shined a flashlight on the fish with the lights out until the fish got tired of this routine and would swim away whenever I used the flashlight.

[Carl]

I am glad you are seeing improvement.

Generally Parasite Clear is for larger parasites such as Trematodes based on its ingredients (Praziquantel, Metronidazole, Acriflavin, Diflubenzuron), but it can certainly have some actions against Ich or Velvet based on these ingredients

The Medicated Wonder Shells also have Acriflavin in them, but are more aimed at Velvet, Ich and Fungus..

Since there is know way of knowing for sure, it is also possible that the combination of "all of the above" made a difference.

Please keep an eye on them still, as recurrences are always possible. The Med. Wonder Shells can help here as well.

Carl