Brook time

[Bomber]

Just a heads up for you guys. It's that time of year again and we're seeing it a lot in pathology. Several transshippers and wholesalers have had to flush their systems out with formalin these past few weeks. So, be on the look out.

:wave: Jerel

[billsreef]

Thanks for the heads up Jerel :D

[Boomer]

Boy Jer, I got all excited by that title and was wondering were in the H_ _ _ _is there Brooky's (Brook Trout) in Florida:D

[Masoch]

I just bought a pair of TR clowns ... both now have brooklynella. I wasn't on the lookout for it since, according to Wilkerson, brook's mostly a thing of the past for TR clowns.

[ziah]

Originally posted by Masoch
I just bought a pair of TR clowns ... both now have brooklynella. I wasn't on the lookout for it since, according to Wilkerson, brook's mostly a thing of the past for TR clowns.

Is brook exclusive to clowns?

[Boomer]

Is brook exclusive to clowns?

No, not by a long shot. It is a very common diseases and is often mis-ID'ed as (CRFD) Coral Reef fish Cisease, aka Oodinium occelatum or it newers name Amlyoodinium occelatum. It is problaby responsible for more fish deaths than any other fish disease.

according to Wilkerson, brook's mostly a thing of the past for TR clowns.

Know there is a line of BS

[Masoch]

And now I know better

:(

I also lost my royal gramma (my first SW fish) because I couldn't catch him until it was too late.

But now I have the dirt cheap hospital / QT tank: hunk of base rock, PVC tube, 5.5 gallon tank, sponge filter and air pump. One clown's looking better, and the other one ... well, his colour's improved ... but I'll see how he's doing by morning.

But I do have two questions, 'tho. How long to keep the clowns in QT before moving into the (now fishless) display tank? How long before the display tank is disease-free?

[chepvegas]

If you have fish with brooklynella how would you treat them if in there case its lethal to use copper?

[minus_13]

Do a 15 minute fresh water dip... I have just seen a miracle with two clowns after doing it! Here's some steps:

1. Get your R/O water ready. 1/2 gallon will do.

2. Add baking soda gradually to bring the PH up to about 8.2 (or whatever your tank is). I find that 1/4 per gallon is just right. That would be 1/8 of a cup for 1/2 a gallon.

3. Warm up the freshwater to the temperature currently in the tank.

4. Throw in an air stone.

5. Drop the fish in and wait exactly 15 minutes, gently stirring the water to keep the fish moving somewhat.

6. If the first dip doesn't work, do the same procedure 24 hours later, but with 1 drop of formulin.

This has done wonders for me. Good luck.

[HIPPUS]

where can i get formalin from i need asap

[ATJ]

Some LFS stock it. Otherwise, try a pharmacy or a veterinarian.

[clsund]

I was wondering, how long before you know whether you are in the clear or not for Brook? I fished my clown out of the tank and put him and my red headed goby in a hospital tank where I now see what seem to be pieces of skin floating around. That was five days ago. the clown still seems sluggish and won't eat much, though he does seem to be eating a little (since I put a couple pellets in and when I come back, they're gone).

Oh, also, I did two formalin dips, one on thursday, one yesterday.

[TerryB]

If you use the formalin correctly it will cure brooklynella. Do a search on formaldehyde and SeaScope magazine and you will find a article about it. You can also just type in a google search using my name to find it.
Terry Bartelme

[jciwlsn]

Hope this isn't a stupid question......

I noticed this morning that one of my clowns has Brook and was wondering if coral can be affected by this disease? I'm going to a frag swap on Saturday and don't want to pass it on to someone from one of my soft corals.

I've searched the forums for info, but can't find anything - hope this is good news.....

Thanks :)

[Boomer]

was wondering if coral can be affected by this disease?

No, it is a fish obligated parasite


Here is TB's article

http://216.168.47.67/cis-fishnet/seascope/99SS1601.htm

Terry

BTW, did you see the rather nasty error in Vol. 20, Issue-3-2003, on U. marinum.....Cooper Sulfate...1.6 - 2.5 ppm = many dead fish. I called them and told them about it. I wonder if that is why that issue isn't on line at Marineland

[jciwlsn]

Whew, thank you very much! I'll take a look at this article....

Now I just have to take care of the little guy.....

[Boomer]

ATJ

Nice website :thumbsup:

I'll be sending people there, great info :D

[Strandedthinker]

anyone have a picture of this?

[dwall174]

I’m also interested in seeing some pic's of this brooklynella I just heard of it several weeks ago? :rolleye1:

[dwall174]

Originally posted by Bomber
Just a heads up for you guys. It's that time of year again and we're seeing it a lot in pathology. So, be on the look out.

What should we be looking for? Are there any early warning signs?

[ATJ]

Heavy breathing and sometimes lesions and heavy mucus.

See: Brooklynella (http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/brooklynella.html).

[ATJ]

Originally posted by minus_13
Do a 15 minute fresh water dip... I have just seen a miracle with two clowns after doing it!
Freshwater dips are not effective for Brooklynella. Only formalin baths (http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/formalinbaths.html).

If the freshwater baths made a difference to the clowns, they probably had Amyloodinium (http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/amyloodinium.html), which as Jerel explains is often misdiagnosed as Brooklynella.

[Crazy-Algae-Eater]

I couldn't agree with you all on how deadly this desease is since I lost my two most beautiful for that I had for 2 years to that ugly parasite. My red Flame Angel & Dejardini Sailfin Tang.

[skfuller]

what is the easiest way to tell brook from marine velvet??

[ReefRian]

I recently had a problem with our clownfish. From the book we had we figured we had brook. The male clown's top 1st fin was down, he was breathing hard, and got a white film on his body. My husband did a 30 sec freshwater dip and this seemed to help a little bit, after the dip he got his appetite back and his fin came up a bit. The next day the male started looking the same as he did before and the female started to look like she had a film on her body. So we caught them both and did a 15 min saltwater dip like our book said. I watched them while the dip occured, just incase I needed to rescue them immediatly. When we put the two in the container the male just rested on the bottom breathing hard, I occasionally tried to get him swimming about a little. The female was swimming and wiggling like normal. After about 3 minutes the male started to swim and wiggle like the female, so he was starting to feel better. Then after about 5 or 6 minutes I noticed little white spots appear on both fish. I looked like they were covered in microbubbles or ich. After 11 minutes they has all fallen off the female and after 14 minutes they had fallen off the male. Today they are swimming and eating, looking much better. One side note, neither fish started scratching that we could tell and they stayed in the middle column of the tank and never swam to the bottom or at the top to try to get more oxygen. What do you think we had? If we need to we will continue to do freshwater dips. How long will it stay in the system? Will we ever be rid of it. We did loose an adult male Banggai Cardinal we think to this. We had recently purchased two signal spot gobies from a pet store and we believe they introduced this to our tank.

Rian

[ReefRian]

Oh, I forgot to mention. The tank with the clowns also is connected to a tank by a bridge that has 2 6-line wrasses, a bi-color goby, lawnmower blenny, and a fire fish. All these fish look normal and are acting normal.

Rian

[Plato]

This treatment comes form The Handbook of Fish Disease by Dieter Untergasser THF publications. Page # 125 method C7.
Short bath with 2.6 ml formalin to 10 liters of seawater in a seperat tank for 30 minuts. Rember formalin is highly toxic and carcinogenic. I have found using remidys that alow the fish to remain in salt water prevents the fish the stress (mainly on the kidneys) of osmotic shock, rember what you Dr. told you when you were sick, drink plenty of fluids. Dehydration this rapid can greatly stress fish.

[ReefRian]

Thank you for your response, unfortuantly it was too late. The night I posted we did a formalin dip and the male responded a little bit but then a couple days later he looked worse then he did before the dip. We knew he was probably not going to make it but we had to do everything we could to try to save him so we did another formalin dip about 4 days after the 1st dip. The next morning he was dead. Our female has started to show a little bit of the signs, not as much as the male when we started treating him, so hopefully we will be able to cure her and she will survive. We did a formalin dip on her two days ago and she has been swimming great in her little tank and seems to go after food, though we're not sure if she is eating or not. We are also doing daily water changes to her tank since there is no filtration in the tank, just a heater and a bubbler as well as some pvc pipe for hiding and swimming around.

We are also putting about a drop of formalin in the tank with her every three days to try to kill any of the parasite that is in the water column and are doing this every few days because of the water changes we are doing.

Rian

[rockhoundmaiden]

What is Brook? Is there an article or tell-tale signs? Thanks

ReefRian - sorry to hear about your fish - I hope the female will make it.

[ReefRian]

Brooklynilla is a predominant fish disease though other fish can be affected by it. Normally the fish starts breathing very heavily and stops eating, it also will start to get a slime coat that is milky in color and in advance cases the clown or affected fish may swim close to the top in an effort to get more oxygen. The disease parasite attacks the gills and starts to suffocate the fish from what I understand.

Our female is doing great right now. Instead of treating her with formalin (since it didn't help the male) I decided to treat her with copper and low salinity. We removed her from the tank and set her up in a large critter tank with some pvc, a heater and air tube. When I first started her in it, she shed her slime coat which was really milky and she looked horrible. But over time it all came off and she slowly started to swim some more and finally started eating again. Now she eats 3 times a day (small amounts) and comes to the surface to feed. She has also adopted the bottom corner of the tank to be her host and seems to lay down and not move much until you come near the tank, then she is swimming around hoping you will feed her. She has been in the separate tank for about 3 weeks and is doing great. No signs of any problem. As for the rest of the tanks, no other fish has shown signs of any disease and are eating healthly. I guess the clowns became succeptible becasue they both had small wounds on their sides from hosting in the frogspawn. They dart into it so fast they must bump into the branches and scratch themselves. We'll probably wait a little longer before adding her back into the tank and are thinking about getting a mate for her. She really misses having someone to swim with.

Rian

[prop-frags]

I just came across this article (http://216.168.47.67/cis-fishnet/seascope/99SS1601.htm) on using formalin - it's well written and has some good tips.

[Steve_B]

Well here I go again. I had a zebra angel die a several months ago from an undiagnosed parasitic infection. None of the other fish showed or have shown signs of infection. I think I waited too long to begin treatment and it appeared to suffocate to death from an infestation in its gills. I tried a formalin dip to no avail so I think it was probably ich or amlyoodinium occelatum. I was unable to treat the entire tank it was in, because my cowfish could not tolerate copper and I had no quarantine or hospital tank at the time. Having had several months pass with no signs of a problem in the main tank I felt confident enough to replace the angel. I bought another Zebra angel about a month ago, a female this time, and put it into my newly acquired isolation tank. About a week and a half ago it started to show signs of a parasitic infection (spots and heavy respiration). I started hypo, which seemed to have no effect and the condition worsened. After researching the symptoms, I have come to the conclusion that it is either Brook or amlyoodinium. Both require different treatments, neither of which will kill both parasites. This time I’m covering all bases by doing a Formalin bath and running copper in the tank. This angel is much stronger than the other, most likely because of the advanced stage of the disease in the first one. I'll report back with my progress as it unfolds

[Steve_B]

Well I was unsucessful at a cure. Either the treatment or the disease took him. I think I'm going to stay away from Zebra angels and possibly the LFS he came from. This has been 2 bad experiences in a row.

[Reeftreasures]

brooke is over running all my tanks and i have no clue why since they are all seperate i lost everything in my reef so far and now im starting to lose everything in my FOWLR what should i do and how long do i have to wait until i add new fish into the system

reef tank
65 AGA
filter consists of carbon and filter pad
no skimmer
all parameters are perfect

FOWLR
29 AGA
filter 2 AQ 300 1- cheato and 1- carbon and filter pad
no skimmer
all parameters are perfect

please help i can't take watching my fish die

p.s. i tried a fomalin 3 dip but it doesn't seem to help

[dja1980]

My Clown is showing symptoms similar to that of Reefrian's... heavy breathing, not eating, not really swimming around, but staying in the center of the tank in the same spot. I thought I saw some pin-tip-sized white spots, but can't tell for sure. My question is how do you cure the water in the DT of Brook once the fish is cured in a QT? Won't the fish just catch it again once it is released back into the DT where ther parasite lives?

[ReefRian]

I believe the parasite will die if there are no fish for it to host in in the DT. I'm not sure it brook is what my fish had, and I'll probably never know for sure. After treating the female with hyposalinity and copper for about a month and a half, she was all better so we added her back into the tank (we did not have any other clowns in the tank, only a bi-color blenny, lawnmower blenny, 2 six line wrasses and a firefish). It has been a couple months and she has shown no sign of the parasite again. Either it is all gone or she is very healthy now and is fighting it on her own.

Rian

[dja1980]

That's good to know. Unfortunately I don't have a QT yet, but I'm in the process of purchasing the new 24g Nano Cube as an upgrade to my 12g Cube. I will keep the 12g as my QT tank, but I don't think my clown will make it that long. He hasn't eaten for about three days now. I was thinking of giving him the Formalin bath, but I don't think that will help if he just gets put back into the DT after his bath since the water will still be infected with the parasite.

[ReefRian]

We didn't have a qt either so we just used a large critter cage with a air stone and heater. We just did water changes every two days. Kept the salinity at 1.018 since clowns can live in low salinity up to 1.010. If you keep them in low salinity then the parasites can't survive but the clownfish will be fine. I kept mine at 1.018 for the duration of her stay in the tank (about 1.5 months) and she was fine. You can always use a 5 gal bucket or a large bowl will work also.

Rian

[billsreef]

Here's a few pictures to help people with diagnosis. Courtesy of Steven Pro.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-10/sp/feature/images/Picture-011.jpg

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-10/sp/feature/images/Picture-015.jpg