Flame Angel exhibiting rapid breathing

I'm at a loss on what is going on, and I'm assuming time is not on my side so here's the situation:

- Came home last night, all fish looking fine.
- Hour later I feed my fish, notice flame angel breathing very heavy after feeding. Sometimes he opens/close his mouth rapidly when feeding, but this was occurring clearly after feeding.
- To make sure this is clear, this flame angel is approx. 4 years old, and has been in my tank for about 18 months (30 month old tank). I highly doubt he's still acclimating.
- The previous day I installed a new power head(Koralia evo 750), so my first assumption was stray voltage (I have a grounded probe though). I immediately turned off new powerhead, turned off RKL unit(turned on another channel last night on it), to set everything back to what it was like the day before.
- I threw an air stone into the tank, to increase the oxygen. It's a pretty big air pump so I'd be surprised if I didn't near oxygen saturation of the water. I also lowered the temp by a degree to also increase dissolved oxygen.
- Double checked my grounded probe, all checked out.
- Measures Ammonia: 0, Nitrites: 0, and Nitrates: 10ppm. 10ppm nitrates is typical for me.
- I have not introduced any new fish for over a year. My last addition was a cleaner shrimp 2 months ago.

So at that point, I waited. Several hours later, he was still breathing hard. No other fish in the tank is acting abnormal (besides being sketched out by the additional bubbles from the air stone).

Now to add to the confusion:

- The flame angel swims as if nothing was wrong, and he's eating when I put food in the tank. Besides his sudden rapid breath, I cannot see anything else wrong.


My next steps:
- Going to actually measure the dissolved oxygen.
- Ordered an ORP Probe.
- Making 30 gals for a WC (on a 90 gallon tank) on Saturday.


Has anyone experienced this? Anything else I should check for? Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

 

could it be that the new PH blasted some crunk on your rocks causing this?

 

The new PH replaced one that was pointed directly at the surface. Could it have had chemicals on it? Possibly? I did wash it off with RO water before putting it into the tank.

I did turn off my sump and changed the sock out last night. When I turned the sump back on it spit some stuff into the tank from the tubing (I have some type of spongy animal that lives in my overflow and return that some of them get dislodged when I turn the sump on again, but this has happened a few times without issue).

While on "PH", my pH figure has floated between 8 and 8.15 during this time. I'm not going to try to raise it artificially at this time, but with the WC it should increase slightly.

In addition to my ideas above, I'm going to put a new sock on just in case.

 

any dead shrimps or snails?

 

My Cleaner molted that morning and is acting normal. I also have a peppermint shrimp which does not look like they molted and looks fine.

I have about 40-50 astrea snails, I counted about 30 at least, so I doubt there's been a huge die off.

If my flame angel is ok when I get back from work(and exhibiting the problem), I will take a video of him to post here.

My other concern is: Can fish choke? I fed him pellets prior to seeing this issue. Could the flame angel have a pellet lodged in his mouth causing this behavior? Has that ever happened to anyone?

 

I had a lemon peel angel do something simular. The breathing got worse to the point that she barely moved. Found out it was called Dwarf Angel Disease. Not alot of them get it. I got lucky and there was a local guy who was very familiar with it. Look for discoloration in the stomache area. If so its hemoriging inside. Not much you can do for them. Hope this isnt it.

 

I noticed slight discoloration near his gills. It was just darker, not blue or black in particular, just darker than the other areas. I can't confirm if that was present before though. I'll have to check when I get home.

So if it's Dwarf Angel Disease, is there any treatment? Suppose there would be no reason to quarantine him if it's a disease specific to angels, nor would I want to put that stress on him.

If it's hemorrhagic injury then I would imagine it's fatal :-[

This flame angel (Zippo is his name), has been incredibly hardy and a very thick fish, always eating and picking at algae in the tank. I've been very impressed by his health from the horror stories that I've read about flame angels.

If stray voltage was the issue, how long would it take for me to notice differences after the voltage has been removed? I read it's not an instantaneous change but over a day. Is that so?

My gut tells me if he doesn't turn around today then it will be down hill from here. Only option I have left is to speed up the water change to tonight.

 

If he showed the signsand then stopped suddenly I would say he got a pc of pellet lodged. I had my Kole do that once and it took him a while to spit it out, all the while he swam around and continued to flap hi lips and gills wildly. I would say he is fine.

 

rsjakp if that's the case I will be so relieved. I was thinking that could have been the case. It was a new pellet (Formula 2 pellets) I was trying, but I've given it to them a few times over the last week already. But the pellets are larger and harder than the previous ones I've given them.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that its stuck in him. Thank you!

 

In general Flame Angels are not the most hardy of fish. They are a hit or miss fish