# listless elephant nose



## rebeccarainbow (Feb 7, 2014)

I am so sad to be asking you guys about this. As of yesterday my elephant nose was perfectly fine, that is he was swimming all around the tank, eating heartily, curious whenever I came by, rooting around the bottom for food, etc. But today all of a sudden I noticed he was laying on the bottom behind some plants and didn't come out for a feeding. That is very weird for him. I thought he was dead but when I prodded him with a net he swam around and even started nosing the plants looking for food and swam up to me to see what I was doing, which is the usual reaction he has to me being anywhere near the tank. Then he didn't eat when I tried putting in some more blood worms now that he was "awake" and went back to his cave of bog wood and laid on his side. He has never been this listless, we always joke that he never sleeps or hides because he is always swimming all over, day and night. 

I have noticed that he might be looking a bit skinny lately but I figured it was because of all his numerous quick eating tank mates, mostly rainbows, that are gobbling up the food. He is up there with them at the top during feedings though and I always make sure I see everybody eating and started feeding a bit more and adding it in two stages to be sure he was getting enough. I don't see any other signs of illness at all, no spots, no lack of coloration, no extra film or shredded fins.

I did raised the PH recently to make it more rainbow friendly, EN like a very acidic tank and it was 6.4 but I raised it gradually to 6.6, still in a good range for EN. I also recently took out a powerful air stone because I thought it was causing the plants I have to grow too slowly, but to make up for this I upped the flow on my 2 eheim 2217 filters to the max amount. No other fish look crummy and all are eating and healthy.

The 75 gal tank has been up since July 2013 and I have had the EN since AUG 2013 and he has never had any issues before. I do weekly 25% water changes, the last was this past Wed. The water levels are pristine and even with what they have been, which is:

PH 6.6
Nitrite 0
Nitrate <20
temp 79F
ammonia 0
Phosphate <2
GH 20>30

I have tons of live plants in the tank, bio filters and EN are sensitive to meds and salt so for all those reasons I do not want to dose the tank for sure, and even if I did I don't know what is the trouble so wouldn't know what to give him. I have a 5.5 hospital tank but honestly I am nervous about putting him in there because the water levels are very different than my main tank and he will be so stressed in there without big plants and wood to hide in.

What do you think is the matter and what can I do? Any help I get will be very appreciated! I feel so bad for him.


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## jschwabe5 (Nov 26, 2011)

It's tough to say for certain what is wrong, but your EN has a couple symptoms of internal worm parasites of loss of appetite and onset of thinness from a fish eating regularly. I would treat the whole tank, not just the EN, as the other fish have likely been exposed. You might want to treat with Bendazole or a combo of seachem paraguard and metronidazole, or levamisole


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## coralbandit (Jul 29, 2012)

We have a great resource for Levamisole; [email protected] .Charles has helped many with internal parasites if you think that may be what it is.
He may even be able to offer some advice.
He probly has the other meds also if they are hard to find.


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## sivakv (Aug 6, 2010)

you could try freshly hatched brine shrimp, since he has a small mouth, needs to suck in its food, he might not be getting adequate to eat. They are quite poor eaters due to their mouth hence species only tank is good..and eating adequately might be an angle to check. I do not know for how long you have kept it in your tank...hese are quite sensitive to medication as well...


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## rebeccarainbow (Feb 7, 2014)

Thanks everyone but my elephant nose died the night before last. He was eating frozen brine shrimp and bloodworms with no issue before his quick decline and after a very careful inspection of his body there still seems to be no sign of illness. It is possible that he had an internal parasite but I can't dose my tank with meds and anyways EN are so sensitive to meds it seemed too risky. My lfs thinks he just reached the end of his lifespan and that was all. So very sad. I'm not going to get a new guy and will just stick with prediminantly rainbows now.


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## pepe (Nov 11, 2013)

Sorry for your loss. I was following this thread with great interest. Good Luck with the rainbows.


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