GSP Chronic illness & recovery w/youtube video link

Oh no! Sick fish?! Come here and see if someone can help!
Forum rules
Read this before posting!!

Since this board has been up, we have found there are several questions that routinely get asked in order to help diagnose problems. If you can have that information to begin with in your post, we'll be able to help right away (if we can!) without having to wait for you to post the info we need.

1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.

2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.

3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)

4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.

5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.

We want to help, and providing this information will go a LONG way to getting a diagnosis and hopeful cure that much faster.

While you wait for assistance:
One of the easiest and best ways to help your fish feel better is clean water! If you are already on a regular water change schedule (50% weekly is recommended) a good step to making your fish more comfortable while waiting for diagnosis/suggestions is to do a large water change immediately. Feel free to repeat daily or as often as you can, clean water is always a good thing! Use of Amquel or Prime as a dechlor may help with any ammonia or nitrite issues, and is highly recommended.

Note - if you do not normally do large water changes, doing a sudden, large water change could shock your fish by suddenly changing their established water chemistry. Clean water is still your first goal, so in this case, do several smaller (10%) water changes over the next day or two before starting any large ones.
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cr302186
Puffer Fry
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Dec 18, 2016 1:56 pm
Location (country): New Jersey

GSP Chronic illness & recovery w/youtube video link

Post by cr302186 »

Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate – Barely above 0
Salinity – 1.020

67 Gallon Display
40 Gallon Sump (30 gallons filled)
50-60 lbs rock + 500ml of seachem matrix rock
Reef Octopus 110 skimmer

1 GSP – Sole inhabitant

30% Water Change every 3 – 4 Weeks
Whole Foods frozen seafood mix 5 days per week – Squid, Scallops, Shrimp and Mussels soaked for 2 hours in combo of Kent Zoe, Selcon and BioChem

------------------------------------------

I’ve had Boogie since December 2016 and he has had chronic bouts of skin deterioration and clamped gills. Symptoms come and go every 60 days or so but he always seems to recover strong. Over the past year, I’ve done 2-4 week cycles of Paraguard, API General Cure and PraziPro but no permanent solution! At the advice of PP, I scrapped the supplemental carbon filter and it seemed to help for a while but now my poor little guy is sick again :( He's in my office and I hate to see his flashing and irritation spasms that accompany the symptoms.

The youtube link below combines 6 short clips to show how quickly and dramatically can go from sick to healthy in just a few days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZskVSGrqmG0

The clips are in the following sequence:

11/16/17 - Healthy
12/12/17 - Sick
8/27/17 - Healthy
8/31/17 - Sick
3/6/18 - Healthy
4/24/18 - Sick

Any advice?! Please help! Thank you!
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Pufferpunk
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Re: GSP Chronic illness & recovery w/youtube video link

Post by Pufferpunk »

I am not the best person to ask about disease treatment.
Try this group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/220024505125640/
You are getting sleepy... you only hear the sound of my voice... you must do water changes... water changes... water changes... water changes...

"The solution to pollution is dilution!"
cr302186
Puffer Fry
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Dec 18, 2016 1:56 pm
Location (country): New Jersey

Re: GSP Chronic illness & recovery w/youtube video link

Post by cr302186 »

I’m happy to report that Boogie has (yet again) made 85%-90% recovery without medication or intervention. I would prefer not to blindly put him through copper or formalin treatments... and I once saw a post on here: sometimes all we can do is provide them with good nutrition, clean water and a spacious/stress free environment.

FWIW to anyone with a GSP - By far the most drastic improvements to his recovery time and personality were undenaibly attributable to lessons learned on this forum:
1) increase from a 36” basic tank to a 48” display w/sump and skimmer
2) eliminate carbon canister filter and repalce with significantly more rock for both bio filter and to provide daily entertainment / exploration
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