[OceanicCorals-Ian-]

Most large angels are misdiagnosed IMO. The bacterial disease is secondary to the actual culprit, which is flukes. These flukes are very common on larger angelfish and it appears that the regals are more prone to them then the others.

These flukes are tranparent and difficult to see. Generally they attack the gills then start to bombard the entire fish. You can spot them in the eyes as being a little piece of white opaque flesh. The flukes causes the fish to stop eating and flash and scrape themselves on anything sharp to get rid of this pest.

The injury to the flashing is what causes inflammation and secondary bacterial infection. Treating the fish with antibacteria does not destroy the flukes and sooner or later the fish dies from not eating and wastes away. Truly a sad sight to see such a maginificent creature die like that.

My best advise is to quarintine all you fish and treat all angelfish with Praziquantal or PraziPro. Immerse your angel in freshwater bath with a high concentration of PraziPro. I do not condone or recommend a specific dosage but make sure that your PH is equivelant to the tank water's PH and that you are running an air stone. I usually dip the fish for about 20-30 minutes and repeat this process once a day until the flukes are gone.

You will see the flukes begin to lose hold on the fish after a few minutes. Shorter if you are using a higher dosage of PraziPro. They will appear as oval shaped and transparent. Usually, there are about a couple of dozens that will immediately begin to die off. If you find that a couple of fluke are not fully detaching themselves off of the fish; I use a small plastic pippette that is used from water testing and gently scrape the flukes off of the fish. At this time, the fish is usually very stressed and will be easily scared, so be gentle and patient. I believe that a fish can feel your energy just as a dog can feel it as well.

At this time I also use methelyne blue to help with the secondary infection. Methelyne blue is an antiseptic and will reduce the oxygen levels in the bath; this is why I suggest using an air stone in the bath; to combat the loss of oxygen from MB. I would recommend using a variable air pump so that you can control the amount of air bubbles. The more air bubbles the more turbulent the bath water will be and this in turn causes the fish to become more stressed. Find a happy medium and WATCh your fish carefully. If it begins to lay down on it's side; stop the bath. Try it again the next day. The main thing is to not stress the fish and DO NOT put it back into it's original tank as there could be other flukes in the water column waiting to attach themselves to the fish when you place it back.

Once the flukes are cleared the fish you will immediately see an improvement and hopefully it will take to eating right away. Coax it with some clams in a half shell as they are very finicky eaters; but once eating they can be fed anything and everything.

I have imported many angelfish and have lost many as well unfortunately. I too have misdiagnosed and mistreated and fish only to have it die on me eventually. Regals are beautiful animals and they are very difficult to keep. If your set up is only a few months old; I would not recommend you putting it in your system and if you do, QUARINTINE even if it's been at your LFS for some time.


I hope this helps you on your search to the answer of why Regals are so hard to keep.

Ian.