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Volitans Lion Unable to Open Mouth 10/26/07 Good afternoon, Crew. <The other ScottF> First off, I'd like to insert huge praise of thanks (insert your own for individual, personal gratification) for all of the work that you do for those of use who are ignorant or lazy (some of us are trying to get better). <It's for you I endeavour> Second, I have a Pterois volitans that as of two weeks ago stopped eating. In closer observation, it appears that it is unable to open its mouth. There are no visible injuries and no signs of illness but it is most certainly stressed. Is there anything (other than time) that I can do to get its mouth to start working again, or is there no help left? I have read through all of our lionsfaqs but haven't found any solution. <Perhaps a developmental disorder (genetic), or a trauma... You have two choices... do nothing and hope for spontaneous remission... and secondly; to try and open this fish's mouth operantly... be careful (hold the spines in the dorsal, pectoral fins back, with a wet towel... if you do this> Third, once the Southern California fires are out, who wants to go out for a beer (or three)? <Here here, cough, hack...> Regards, Scott F. (but not Wet Web's) <BobF, in San Diego with fab lunar views...> Green Lionfish with cloudy eyes Hi,,<Hello Robin!>my green lionfish (Dendrochirus Barberi) has cloudy eyes .And I would like to know what to do. I have had it for a little over a month. And it has been eating live saltwater fish that I catch and krill. I changed my water because the ph was high 8.8 It is now 8.4 nitrate 0 ammonia 0,nitrite 0,and nitrite 0 SG 1.024.Also the only time I turn on the light is when I feed it. Other then that is dark with just a little sun light. Please help ASP <Could be either a bacterial infection or parasites, brought in from the fish you are catching and using for food. This is something that you should refrain from. Purchase your food at a pet store to avoid introducing parasites and/or disease into your aquarium. Stop feeding wild caught fish to your fish and see if it clears up.> Thank you. <Good Luck!! -- Brian Griffin>
Lion fish not looking so hot 7/21/07 Hello, <Hi there> I will try and make this quick and to the point. A couple weeks ago there was a ridiculously hot heat wave in Southern California. <I recall> Well as luck would have it my air conditioner broke the day before it hit. Without having a chiller I was screwed( sort of) I kept bags of ice and fans blowing on my tank ( 170 gallon FOWLR aggressive predator tank) despite my best efforts the tank reached 89+ degrees for a day or so. <Wow! Even with your lights off and the top uncovered?> Well I presumably lost my XXL porcupine puffer to the heat, and my xl one spot fox face rabbit fish. I assume the heat did it since my tank has been established and running very well for 1 and half years. No deaths or new additions in about 6 months prior. The Puffer would sit in the corner and breathe heavy and eventually faded in color and died, same with the Foxface, but a couple days prior. The temperature since has gone back to normal and my air conditioner has been fixed. My 2 triggers, wrasse, eel, hermit crabs and grouper are all thriving and acting as though there never was a problem. My lion fish on the other hand refuses( at least I don't see it) to eat now and hides most of the time. It's "spikes" look crooked and all together the fish looks pathetic. It use to swallow krill like there was no tomorrow. <Needs more than this> I have offered it the krill, silversides, squid and it stares at me like I am retarded. Could this be some sort of parasite that came about during the heat wave and is slowly taking out my fish one by one? Or just too much stress on the fish with the temp change and it is trying to rebound? <Mostly this last> I haven't seen it eat in about 2 weeks. Would it just die from not eating so long? <Mmm, no... some lions have gone for months w/o feeding, and resumed> I really will be upset if I lose another fish so soon after not having lost one in so long. Your help and advise is greatly appreciated. <Do take a read here: http://wetwebmedia.com/lionfdgfaqs.htm and the linked files above. Bob Fenner> Lionfish... hlth., nutr. 9/4/07 Hi guys! It has been a while since I last talked with you, but you have always given me good advice, and I haven't been able to find exactly the same problem on the Web site. I have a Volitans lion (Venus) that we have had for 2 years; she is about 8 inches long. She took well to hand feeding, and will eat almost anything we give her. We give her silver sides about one time per week, and the rest of the time we feed her either frozen or freeze dried shrimp. <Too much fat in these foods... and nutrient deficient...> A couple of times she has taken an entire cube of frozen blood worms while we were trying to feed the other fish, but this has not happened in over 6 months. She shares a 220 gallon tank with a Rectangulatus trigger, a saddle puffer, a lemon peel angel, a scopas tang, and a flame hawk. About a week ago the lion stopped eating with no warning, and she has been listing to her right side. Her coloring is normal, and her size has not changed, nor does her breathing seem rapid. She seems to float to the top of the tank, and floats there either on her back or on her side. She has no interest in food, and she seems that she can only swim with her head pointed down; she doesn't seem able to swim towards the top of the tank facing upward, she just sort of floats there. We did a 1/4 water change, and tested the water, and all levels are normal. All of the other fish have been behaving normally. I am wondering if this is possibly a problem with her swim bladder? <Caused by?> She has never shown behavior like this before, and there have been no additions at all to the tank (fish or rock) in about a year. She does occasionally try to swim down and sit there, but she ends up floating back up to the top, and is usually on her side, and if I open the lid part of her pectoral fin is actually out of the water between the water level and the lid. She floats with her right side down. I am not sure how old she was when we purchased her, but she was only about 3 or 4 inches long at the time. Please help!!! (if you can). I don't want to lose her, but I really have no idea what to do for her, and it really seems like it is a struggle for her to even try to swim downwards. We have not seen her really open her mouth at all in the last week...at first I thought possibly lockjaw, but I don't think that explains the strange floating behavior. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time in advance, and thanks to all of you who counsel our fellow aquarists. Your site is truly wonderful, and it's so great to have a place to go for advice and information. Sincerely, Jennifer and Steve <I do hope your Lion spontaneously gets better... with just time going by. It might have swallowed something that is decomposing, producing an air pocket inside of it... If it does resume normal orientation and feeding, I would take to broadening the food menu... and soaking some of these foods in a vitamin, HUFA mix (like Selcon). Otherwise, there is not much that can be "done" here other than wait. Bob Fenner> Lion fish behaviour/illness... nutritional def. syndrome/fdg. 8/8/07 Hi Crew, First I'd obviously like to thank you all for having this phenomenal web site, it is definitely my primary resource for just about everything I try to do with this hobby. <Welcome> I feel that there likely is an answer already within your site, but I just can't seem to put these pieces together well enough to be confident in how I'd like to proceed.... So, to the point... (I'll try to spare you as much of my novice speculation as possible, and just give you my observations) I've had my Fu Manchu Lion (Dendrochirus biocellatus with three eye spots) for just over a year, he is the sole inhabitant of a 60 gal with about 80 lbs of live rock. There have been no attempted additions to the tank or otherwise since my last addition of 15 lbs of live rock 4 months ago. This tank is in the basement of my house. For the first six months of his stay with me he ate gut packed ghost shrimp, eventually he began eating freeze dried krill (vitamin soaked), but will still eat nothing other than those krill (a fish of discriminating tastes, he would actually spit out anything that wasn't krill) More recently he won't eat anything at all. <... too likely an effect of the restricted diet> I last fed him Monday of last week and while a heat wave hit where I live.... The water in the tank rose to 83 over a day or two's time <Should be fine> and when I tried to feed him again he feigned going after the piece of krill, but then gave up. I tried to feed him daily after that and he would still eat nothing. Originally my take on it was that the rising temperature where I live may have upset him enough to initiate this fasting... his tank normally holds a temperature of 79 degrees. Unsure of how to handle the unstable temperature, i tried to wait it out, hoping the heat would break, knowing that fluctuations in temperature could be thought to be worse than a slightly high temperature. (the water quality maintained itself at 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 8.3 ph and around 15ppm nitrate [i know this is high, i have been having significant trouble lowering it]) As of Friday that week I started to get more concerned, as he really did seem particularly lethargic and his belly was starting to look a bit more concave than I'm comfortable with. there was no report of the temp outside lessening, and the lion's colour became pale as well as his breathing particularly rapid. In my own panic and haste I decided to attempt to lower the temp by a degree or so by doing a 15 gal water change with the new water being around 80 degrees. Now since he's a rock clinger and I work long hours I can't verify if these next symptoms were or were not present before hand.... but obviously if my guesswork and recklessness had paid off I wouldn't be writing you, so what I can tell you is through my observation after that point, he became more pale, and within an hour or three he was seeming to be significantly disoriented. He would try to swim and almost appeared drunk, like he didn't know which way was up or where he was going. he was doing strange loops where some of the time he was belly-up (which is very abnormal for him). A little spastic and possibly even a bit twitchy. Luckily (or unfortunately) before I could do any more damage, I had to leave for a few days. I felt sick for having to leave him... but again, sometimes I act rashly when faced with an unwell (or possibly dying) pet. When I returned on Monday, I found him alive but looking disoriented, clinging to his rock in an unfamiliar fashion (normally he sits with "purpose" and doesn't look so vacant) and looking a bit unstable. (though he doesn't appear blind... he reacts to my hand near the glass) On close inspection his fins looked like they might have been rubbed a little on the rocks, a few hours later I noticed that only the lower half of his tail had been damaged, where some areas appear to be broken off (honestly, if I had another fish int he tank I would think he'd been chewed) The upper half of his tail looks perfectly normal. Presently, he doesn't twitch his dorsal spines anymore, where he would normally move them in a jerky wave pattern. He's still not eating or trying to and I have not had any opportunity to watch him swim, but as he shimmies from one rock to another, he still seems to be inclined to lean to one side, and his "bum" or back half seems to hold less weight than it used to... so, what i mean is he seems to have trouble holding it to any surface. <Starvation...> I'm worried anything I do could stress him more and I don't know what would or might do more good than harm. I considered moving him to my Quarantine tank, <Not advised> but I thought a 15g would be more likely to fluctuate with the temperature (if that's even the problem) Also I have a new fish in the Q tank, an Amblygobius phalaena, 3 weeks into his quarantine and perfectly healthy (as far as I can see) Eating ravenously, and not being affected by these same temp. fluctuations... In everything I have done with his quarantine I have paid great attention to not allowing direct or indirect contact between the tanks (as a side note). <I would place this fish with the Lion> I don't know how to proceed from here... My biggest concern is that I can't put my finger on any one thing that might be wrong (or at least connect it to anything I have read in your lion faq's) and am ready lo listen to whatever scolding I need to get to the root of this problem and understand what I can do to help him get well. Tell me what not to do, tell me what to do.... and maybe tell me what I can do in the future about my summertime temperatures... Every fish is a beautiful and amazing one, and Fu really is to me. If I had an equivalent of a Merck Manual of medical info for fish I swear I wouldn't be bothering you, But I really Do appreciate you help for and patience with someone I'm sure you might view as an absolute ninny. I hope some of what I've noted will help you help my fish. Sorry for talking you ear off. I was just trying to give you all the info I have and explain myself in the process. Thank you once more for all of you expert knowledge and help. -Liz <Am hoping that the addition of the other fish, its feeding behavior will spur your lion on to resuming feeding... I would try some live ghost shrimp... and add some vitamin/HUFA mixture (variously sold as commercial prep.s in the hobby) to the water the shrimp were in for a good fifteen minutes before offering... to stimulate appetite as well as possibly supplying needed nutrients. Bob Fenner> What might be valuable information for worried lionfish owners. Ridiculous mis-mix of fishes in a too tiny system 7/21/07 Dear Crew; I have been in the marine world for 7 yrs. and have kept a variety of tanks, systems, and livestock in that time-what prompts me to write this letter to you is a condition that just showed up on my black volitans lionfish," boo".{yes, after the ghost, as he thinks he is very scary} <... Where are the spaces between your sentences?> "Boo" eats like a champ, is quite active, and loves attention of any kind, especially being handfed an assortment of seafood; he lives in a 37 gallon tank <Much, MUCH too small for what fish life you list... Even the Lion alone needs more room than this> that has been established for 4 yrs. with consistent levels in the normal areas, although I keep my salinity at 1.026,and my temp between 78 and 80 degrees; his substrate is 4in.aragonite sand mixed with crushed coral shell, and approx.20-30 lbs. live rock; his tank friends which all get along} are a dogfaced puffer{4in}, <Could be trouble...> a green wolf eel/goby{16in},and a undiluted trigger{2in}. <Is trouble... Mis-mixed here with a Lion> Last week I did a 50% water change, <Too much for routine maintenance> along with a detailed cleaning, which I always move the fish into a big container until the tank is set back up to standerd,with no changes except fresh water and salt. Two days later," boo" was acting very "drunk", not eating, and looked like he had been in a war; his tail fins were choppy, the base of the tail looking wounded, and his main fins seemed to be "shreding"themselves back towards his body. this aspect became more severe within 72hrs.} I have never seen anything like this before, so "boo" was moved to a fresh hospital tank{cycled}located in a "quiet and dim lit room, and observed a few times daily. I read on your site letters from several lionfish owners that had the same "shedding" condition, and a few that had the "drunken"condition;now what I was wondering is these two conditions related to the normal shedding stage, or are they separate? So far,"boo"has made a few lazy lunges at food, but not ate; he does have a area to hide in, and the tank is well filtered and aireated;he spends most of his time on the bottom, or perched at odd angles on rock; he does seem to be a bit less "drunk", and has started making mean faces at me again. I think my actions are correct, and that the two types of symptoms he displayed are related-do you think this to be accurate? Is there anything else I can do for him, or rectify to speed his recovery? Any input from you will be most appreciated, and I wish you all continued success. Sincerely, Remington Cain <Your problems are not using a grammar checker, and environmental... This is an untenable mix of species in too small a volume. Please... learn to proof your English before sending, and read re the "Systems", "Compatibility" of all the species you list... and move these fishes to another, much larger world... And leave out the Undulated Trigger here... Bob Fenner> Lionfish sick, No data 7/17/07 Hello, <Hi there> Please help my wife an I figure out what is wrong with our Volitans lionfish. We have had him for over 6 months, in a established 75 gallon tank with 100 lbs of live rock and adequate filtration. He has grown a lot since we got him. <What do you feed this fish?> He lives with a Huma Huma trigger <Mis-placed here... could be a/the root of the problem> and a Foxface, an urchin and some soft corrals. Within the last week or so his behavior has changed dramatically. He stopped eating. He would swim facing down all the time and dart about suddenly and erratically. Then all of a sudden he wedged himself behind some rocks. he has been there for a few days. I attempted to move him out tonight, and noted that his fins had become extremely frayed. Its almost like he is ramming himself into the rocks. I am afraid he is dying, or will kill himself. After doing some research, I realize we have not been feeding him the best diet, frozen shrimp mainly, <... very likely a factor...> but I don't think this would have caused his sudden downfall. <Could cumulatively> I did have a problem with ICH a few months ago, but that cleared up, <... how?> and all residents of the tank have been very healthy until this. Water quality is good, <... what does this mean qualitatively?> I change the water fairly frequently. What can I do? My wife and I are very distraught. Thanks, Daniel <Like a presidential speech you've presented a lot of words w/o saying much... Please read here: http://wetwebmedia.com/marine/fishes/index.htm Scroll down to the Lionfishes... tray... re Systems, Feeding, Disease... Bob Fenner>
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