Fish disease or sickness? Help

[Reefer_Madness]

To heck with reef shame or pride. My wife's favorite fish just got sick. I tore the tank apart catching him to put him in QT. Can anyone help me diagnose the issue?

 

Below is a pic. Gave him a 10 sec MB dip and now he is getting a Cupramine bath. Am I on the right track? He seems to be acting a little better. Not sitting on the bottom anymore.

 

Please. Any help would be appreciated.

[cpu933k]

What are the symptoms? Hard to tell from the pics. Which fish is it? The foxface or clown or both?

[monkiboy]

hey ben. sorry to hear about the troubles. is it possible to get some better pictures or video of the foxface, presumably that's the one you are having issues with?

 

it looks to be lymphocystis. the white marks or growths is what I guess you are concerned about look to be too large to be the result of an external parasite. how long has the fish been like this? if quite a while then it could also be a bacterial infection of some sort caused by gram positive bacterium which the fish is able to "beat" with it's own natural immune system.

 

anytime symptoms appear you can soak its food in selcon, zoecon and/or vita-chem until it goes away. this strategy helps boost the immune system to fight things off naturally. also, step up your water changes. If it is lymphocystis, then they have the virus for life and symptoms will come & go for the life of the fish. it's akin to the human herpes or wart virus.

 

lymphocystis:

symptoms - appears as a white or beige colored cauliflower-like growth that usually starts on the fins and spines and sometimes spreads to the body. Initially it may be small (looks like ich), and then grows in size (which is how you know it’s not ich). lympho is a virus that many fish carry for life. fortunately, it is rarely fatal or even harmful to the fish, and symptoms will come and go.

 

treatment options - no known cure or treatment exists. however, feeding vitamin-enriched foods and maintaining pristine water conditions may expedite the “going away” process.

 

more detailed info: https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fa181

 

if you can provide better photos or there are new symptoms for another diagnosis feel free to share but this is the best I can do with what has been presented.

 

hope this helps, sir.

[Reefer_Madness]

Foxy the fox face. He was hiding during the day which is strange. Yes the spots are the issue. Sorry for the bad pic. The clown is just getting QRd. He's normal.

[Reefer_Madness]

Marco - Ive had him about 3 years and he has had an outbreak of what I thought was ich a couple of times.  Each time it has gone away.  This "outbreak" started about 2 days ago.  I introduced a new fish about a week ago.  Do you think the stress is what triggered it to come back?  I thought maybe the new fish somehow infected him, even though the new fish was in a QT tank for a little over a week with Cupramine and Prazipro.   

[monkiboy]

if these symptoms are what you saw last time, it does not appear to be ich per my notes above. if lympho, a combination of events or parameters may have caused the reappearance of the external symptoms. if the vitamins don't work and it keeps coming back, you might want to QT & treat with a broad spectrum antibiotic such as kanaplex. I don't know what your qt and/or treatment protocol has been for the rest of your livestock. if using cupramine properly you want to use it for at least two weeks at therapeutic levels and if time allows a gradual increase to those levels over the course of about a week so three weeks total, at least (a lot of folks advocate use of cupramine over 1 month), all after the fish is eating vigorously reliably and consistently. this can take some time but the end result saves a lot of head aches and you really develop a personal bond with your specimens, their needs, and habits. you can see why our client's will wait three to six months to get their otherwise finicky eaters or "expert-only" specimens from us - it's a lot of work but so rewarding. thanks for your willingness to post and ask questions on here. g'luck!

[monkiboy]

if the foxface was in the tank that is having the possible MV outbreak then even if it is not showing the symptoms I wanted to be sure you understood all the fish that were in that tank, including this specimen, need to go through the same treatment as they are all carriers and need to be treated accordingly. thanks, sir.

[Reefer_Madness]

Yes, Foxy was in the same tank.