strange beani phenom and deaths

[dstuer1950]

In 50 years of fishkeeping I have not encountered this.
Male beani with normal jaw
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i97/dstuer/beanii/019.jpg
overnight this presented itself
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i97/dstuer/005.jpg
next day
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i97/dstuer/001-4-1.jpg
the following day death.
Appears to be a dislocated jaw, but the female was divided from male.
I tried to manually snap the jaw back thinking it was dislocated, I have done this in the past for a dislocation.
Within 24 hours the female died.
2 days after her death, the male presented identical symptoms, alone in the tank, he died approx 48 hours later.
On gcca someone said this syndrome has appeared among flowerhorns.
And baldtaxguy had it happen once to a lyonsi.

[notho2000]

This happened recently to two fish of mine. . . . a female Mesonauta insignis (she died the day after I noticed it) and a Green Terror male. I thought that they may have been involved in a jawlocking contest (not with one another, They were in different tanks) and lost but I'm not really sure. It almost looked as if their jaws had been broken (just like your 'beani pics) They were both healthy, prime specimens.
-Jim

[Modest_Man]

I had the same thing happen with a male umbee I had. Best info I got was this -

"Unfortunately, once the mouth/lips get that distended, then there isn't much hope for the fish.

If you catch it early enough (you will see a slight swelling of the mouth area before it starts to eat away holes around the lips) you can stop it but not necessarily cure it 100%. Umbees and festaes, IME, are very susceptible to this disease. I believe the white stringy feces in secondary.

The only thing that really worked for me (and I've tried a lot of different solutions) was a very diligent treatment with Furan 2 or Bifuran, basically a mixture of Nitrofurazone and Furazolidone."

"I believe it is related to an ulcer disease seen more commonly in Koi and is caused by pseudomonas and aeromonas bacteria.

This ulcer disease could be hemorrhagic septicemia with symptoms that include deep skin lesions of variously sized areas of hemorrhage and necrosis. It is a very nasty, and I describe it as taking a dirty blunt screwdriver and taking chunks out of a fish.

I say it could be septicemia or at least related somehow because I've seen at times both symptoms (enlarged swollen and distended lips and hemorrhaging) appearing together.

The nitro is not topical. If you want to use something as a topical agent, try acriflavin. The medication (trade name bifuran or furan 2) is a powdered combination of nitro and furo. It will yellow your water and it isn't very water soluble so you have to "break" up the powder once in the water as it will accumulate along the surface. The yellow water will dissipate over time.

The swollen lips could have been a secondary infection due to injury (and this is the very reason why I don't recommend using egg crate as dividers for cichlids or aggressive fish. I've used it before and learned my lesson and now choose acrylic dividers whenever possible).

But I've seen the problem happen without warning and without prior injury to the mouth area. Also, you mentioned the fish was excreting the dreaded white feces which led me to believe it was a different issue and not caused by the egg crate.

It's strange because I've only seen it happen to a few fish species, particularly umbees. The other fish would be festae and most recently, micropthalmus.

I hope all your other fish are doing well, and hope that you will again raise the umbee. They are great fish!"


Credit goes to EMK aka Ben.