From a scratch, scrape of bruise to the eye from encounters such as fighting with other fish, net abrasion, or coming into contact with a stationary object or organism in the aquarium. Normally, there is only one pop eye. If it is minor inflection, the eye will usually return to its normal appearance without blindness, it can be solved with water change and proper food, this is normally not fatal.
Unless it is very severe and the treatment is not provided or is not ineffective, the eye(s) may burst or disappear altogether. The fish may slowly starve to die.
b) Diseases
Popeye/cloudy eyes can be an outward sign that another disease is present which may be of bacterial, fungal or other origin, such as an internal infection called Ichthyophonus hoferi (fungal disease), or a possible sign of Vibrio (bacterial disease). The fish will die to the disease that caused popeye but will not die from popeye. It is more difficult to diagnosed and treated.
c) Excess copper treatment
Yes, prolong copper treatment may resulted in popeye. It is basically due to the toxins or contaminates in the tanks. The solution is to improve the quality of the water.
Base on my experience on the copper treatment for ich, it is best not exceed more than 5 weeks of copper treatment, in fact three weeks is sufficient to kill ich.
d) Other possible causes
Nutritional deficiency, a gas embolism caused by a sudden rise in tank temperature and the gas bubble disease theory are some of the possible causes.
In the next part of the popeye, I will discuss some of the methods of treatments and the medicines......
Popeye is a disease that cause one or both the eyes to appear like there is a air trapped inside or behind the eyes which causes the eye to enlarge and bulge out. It is most likely to be caused by bacteria.
There is two classifications of bacteria:
a) gram-positive
b) gram-negative
What is the difference between gram-positive and gram-negative?
Using a particular staining process, the bacteria retained (positive) or lost (negative) a violet color (stains) during this process.
It is found that most bacteria that cause disease in marine fish are gram-negative. Popeye is most likely caused by the gram-negative bacteria. Unlike ich, popeye normally does not kill fish in a couple of days, especially larger ones. Unless, it is coupled with some other viral, it may die in a couple of days. Furthermore, popeye in itself is typically not contagious to other fishes in the community.
Symptoms:
This is what I find :
1. Fish starts to hide in some place so that to prevent bully by other fishes
2. It starts to loss appetite
3. Of cause, the pop eye...
4. Not active anymore.....
I have been trying to train the lion fish to eat market prawn so that it will not eat live food; freshwater prawn or small fishes. After more than a month, it finally it is able to eat the market prawn. Not more killing of innocent fishes or prawns, which I hate to see and do so. I am very happy now.......
I read an article on the planted marine aquarium by George Farmer. It talks on how to set up a planted marine aquarium. I am very impressed with the pictures and the knowledge learned from the article. I wish one day I will try a planted marine aquarium.
Courtesy of George Farmer
Courtesy of George Farmer
For more information on how to set up a planted marine aquarium, please visit:
Fish need nutrients such as Proteins, Carbohydrates, Fats and Vitamins. These nutrients are from the food the fish ate. I will not talk about these nutrients as you can google to find out more.
Beside these nutrients they get from the foods, there is another thing that is important to the health of the fish that is Trace Elements. In the ocean, there are plenty of different natural elements and however the fish need no less than 13 of them to live. This are the 'essential elements' or sometimes called trace elements which you normally can buy off the shelve. Some examples are Kent Marine Essential Elements, Seachem Marine Trace Elements, etc.
The elements are taken in by the fish from the water that surrounds them through ingested (swallowed in foods), migrated into the fish through their skin, and passed through the gills. The elements get depleted from the aquarium water.
There are other processes that deplete these elements in our aquariums. They include skimmers, marine organisms (Live Rock, inverts, corals, algae, microbes, etc.), precipitation and complexing with other chemicals and substrates, and losses due to carbon and other such treatments.
Sometimes, water change can not keep in pace with this depletion of the small quantities of the micro elements. Thus, small quantities of element additives put into tank water are needed for proper fish health.
I am using Seachem Marine trace, I normally dose it at middle of the water change period. This is because during water change, the elements are replenished through the new water added and at the middle of the period, I just do a top-up.
While looking for an additional tank at the begining of the Sept, I added a Purple Tang and Tomini Tang after quarantine. Wow, the purple tang started to eat pellets on first day... Always like to add Achilles Tangs and Atlantic Blue tang, guess will have to KIV until I have cycled a new tank.
One unfortunate thing happens, I lost two Green Chromis due to fall into the overflow, I could not take them out sadly.... Now take all the precautions to prevent any re-occurrence again.
Chromis is one of the most hardy fish. Three Chromis out of 4 are from my first batch of fishes that added in the tank. If you want to start the marine aquarium, always start with Chromis first not clown fish or demsel fish, this is because Chromis are not aggressive at all, in fact they are very very peaceful fish. And it is very easy for you to add any type of fish you want in the future.
It remains the same as at 27 Aug 11, all are doing very well. I am thinking of adding a clown triggerfish (last fish to add)... until now, I have not find a suitable size clown triggerfish, will take my time to search.
Beside the water quality, the next important things is providing the required nutrition to the fish. A well-fed with the required nutrition fish is able to heal itself from an injury, fend off bacterial infections, and resist other diseases through immunity and protein-charged barriers (e.g., a healthy mucous coating). This is what I am going to discuss.
Finding the right kinds of foods that suitable to the kind of fish being cared for is sometimes not so easy and maintain the correct diets that have the required nutrients for the fish required time and discipline.
Before buying any fish, you need to understand the eating behaviour, whether it is carnivore (meat eating fish), herbivore (vegetable eating fish) and omnivore (both meat and vegetable eating fish). With this categorization is the basics for deciding what foods are appropriate for any particular fish.
The eating behaviour will determine the feeding frequency and the time that you feed the fish, for example, it is best to feed hermit crab at night when the light is off and all the fishes are asleep. Other example, the most of the fishes, such as Angel fish are small meal eaters because its digestive track can take small intake of foods as they are wildly caught. It will create some inconveniences for people with full time jobs, so try to feed them three meals per day.
I normally feed the fish in morning and night myself and have a timer that feed the fish once a day at around 1pm. This will control the amount of foods and observe the fish during feeding to check on the health of the fish. By reducing the amount of food in the mid day over time; after some time, your fishes will custom to your style of feeding, then you can feed them twice a day. Below is the timer I used.
Next time, I will discuss about the type of additives/nutrients required and my feeding methods and foods.
As the last posting, I have a incoming electrical circuit breaker trip that resulted in many fishes died and followed by an major ich outbreak in the tanks that also killed most of the remaining fishes.
I would like to share my experience learnt from this unfortunate incident.
Due to lack of oxygen, the fishes that did not died during the electrical trip are very weak and ich easily inflected them. I have tried many treatment methods and medicine from SeaChem Paragaurd, AquaPharm Cure Ich, Waterlife Octozin, API Pimafix, Metafix that are mostly reef-safe. For a major outbreak, those medicines are not so effective at all. I also have UVs installed in the tanks. UV will only help to kill the water floating ich not inside the fishes and in the sand ich parasite.
I have no choice to use copper treatment. All the corals and anemones died during the various treatment methods and medicines even the medicine said it is reef safe. Prolong using of any medicine will kill the corals. Cupramine is the best medicine I found to treat ich, however it will definitely kill the corals.
Slowly increase the Copper level. Due to the rocks absorbing the copper, it will take more doses. If the tank volume is 40l, dose 1ml of cupramine per day, continue to dose everyday until copper level reach about 0.25 to 0.5 ppm. You need to continue test the copper level in the tank everyday when you are adding the cupramine.
For my tank , it takes 7 days to reach the recommended level, reminder increase slowly to prevent stress on the fishes.
When you change water, you need to add the amount of cupramine that corresponding to the volume of top up. Maintain the level for 3 weeks after the recommended level have reached.
My hermit crabs survive the treatment, not other anemones and corals. Some fishes already in very bad health eventually died.
Use saltmix during the treatment as NSW may contain ich. I also drops the sg to 1.017 to 1.02 to reduce stress on the fishes.
After 3 weeks, do water change without add anymore cupramine. The copper level will slowly decrease so it will prevent sudden change in the water condition.
During the copper treatment, the tank because a quarantine tank, so it is the best time to add new fishes and rethink the type of fishes to be added.
Reminder you should maintain the recommended copper level for aleast a week after the last fish has added. This is to ensure the ich parasite that is inside the new fish will drop off from the new fish and killed by the copper in the water and in the sand and rocks. So the parasite will not multiply.
Based on my experiences, the recommended copper level can not be maintained from more than 5-6 weeks, this is because copper are toxic and it will cause other problems. I will discuss it next time.
Just to add on on copper treatment, the copper treatment only can be done if your tank is fully cycled and fully matured with no corals and inverts. If you tank is still cycling, adding copper will lengthen your cycling time. I advise not to use any copper treatment during cycling of tank. First of all, you should not be adding any fishes during the cycling process.
You can add fishes during the copper treatment, however you need to ensure the quality of the water that is ANN. Ensure the ANN is prefect are very important. Some may ask why the ANN are zero and the fish still got sick. ANN is a pre-requestic for the fish to live and does not mean good quality of water means no parasitic and diseases in the water.
Copper treatment does not cure marine flukes and worms in the fish. Furthermore, it does not stop other fishes from bullying the fish until it dies, will also be discuss on adding new fishes in the tank to reduce bullying and other disease treatments .
Below is my tanks on 27 Aug 11 after copper treatment done.
This is my old video that I took on 3 July 11. It is before an incoming electrical circuit breaker trip while I am working in mid of July. It resulted in many fishes died and followed by an major ich outbreak in the tanks that also killed most of the remaining fishes.
I always love the movie "Finding Nemo". That is why I initially started with all difference types of clown fishes in the tanks and a blue tang. Unfortunately Clown fish is very easily infected with marine ich as the fish has no scales, it died easily if the body is inflected.
Moving forward... I will discuss the copper treatment, DIY your own foods, the introducing new fishes in a tank, the popeye treatment ...... Also updating my video on my marine tanks..... Please stay tune and feel free to create any discussions, I am also learning too.....
I have been into fish keeping for many years, in fact a few decades. It always has been freshwater fishes. I started from goldfishes to arowana to recently tropical fishes; tetras and tiger barbs. I had a silver arowana with me for 8 years that started a very small tank to a 5 feet tanks. I am more on fish only tank, not planted tank because I love to see fish swimming...
Recently decided to try marine fish. Will be sharing the experiences and knowledge gained. Some may disagree or agree with my methods and techniques, nevertheless these methods and techniques are gained from my experiences, books, information from Internet. It just provides a reference point to start if you have problems or into fish keeping.
