Body slime fugus

kevinathom

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I woke this morning to find a clown nearly dead. It had a white slime on it and appears to be body slime fungus. Now my tang looks awful. This stuff is fast. I have a 65 gal reef tank and am alternating 5 and 10 gallon changes every Saturday. Chems look good. No nitrates and nitrites or ammonium. Any suggestions on how to get rid of this without killing my corals

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I'm no expert but most likely a parasite. I'd qt all fish ASAP. Post pics, and ask dr. Jenn
 
A kohl, sailfin, and yellow. They are all young. The Kohl died this afternoon. I went by pure reef and am using metronidazole. I'm hoping it helps before the others die.

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:sick: Here are two pictures of my sailfin as of this morning. My kohl died yesterday - whatever this is, it has acted fast. This sailfin looks slightly different than the kohl and the clown. In addition to the white spots, the clown and the kohl looked like a white film was coming off of them almost like a snake sheds its skin. I don't know where this could have come from or how to get rid of it, but any suggestions will be appreciated. I hate the thought of losing the rest of my fish. Btw....corals still look fine which seems to make water quality less likely to be the culprit. :sick:
 
ive never seen anything like that before sorry about the fish loss
 
Holy smokes :(

The slime you're describing on the clowns sounds like Brooklynella. Clowns are particularly vulnerable to it, but any fish can catch it, and some never show symptoms but can carry it.

Fungus is pretty rare in saltwater - the salt inhibits it.

Brooklynella can kill within hours - as you witnessed.

That Sailfin... wow, I'm not sure what to make of that. You likely have more than one thing going on there. At first glance, I thought Ich, but it's larger than most Ich I've seen.

My suggestion - quarantine ASAP. Get some Hikari Ich-X or another formalin-based medication. (Do not mix medications). Formalin will address both Ich and Brooklynella and some other parasitic infestations too.

Copper will address Ich, but not Brooklynella (or Oodinium or, or...) so Formalin is the way to go because it will knock out a variety of things. Tangs don't always tolerate copper very well either, and if they have Brook, it won't do any good anyway.

Do it NOW. Treat ALL the fish, even if they don't show symptoms. Leaving an asymptomatic fish in the tank while you treat the others, leaves a host for whatever you have going on, and the treated fish will become reinfested when they are returned to the display.

If you're too late (I hope not)... and you lose all the fish, don't add any more fish for at least 4-6 weeks to interrupt the life cycle of it, and QUARANTINE all new arrivals going forward.

An ounce of prevention is well worth a pound of cure.

As the weather starts to warm up, Brooklynella will become a lot more prevalent. It's that time of year.

Jenn
 
Thank you for the info. I have never seen anything work this fast. ls the formalin compatible with a reef tank? Unfortunately I do not have a quarantine tank....yet.

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kevinathom;949420 wrote: Thank you for the info. I have never seen anything work this fast. ls the formalin compatible with a reef tank? Unfortunately I do not have a quarantine tank....yet.

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NO. Ich-X says it's OK but I wouldn't take that bet. And if you're lucky enough to find Formalin-3 (it's scarce nowadays), that's definitely NOT reef-safe.

The parasites are invertebrates. So are your corals and clean up critters.

Unfortunately this is a difficult lesson in why EVERYONE should quarantine. Most people don't - until they have a wipe-out :(

Jenn
 
A difficult lesson to be sure. It's a relatively new tank and I have really tried to baby it. It is hard to see the fish struggle and die. Any thoughts on what could have caused this? My chems have been great and I've been consistent with water changes. Would a uv setup have prevented this?

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Some fish brought it in, and it spread.

UV might slow it down but unless the organism itself passes through the UV to get fried, then, no. Once it's on the fish it's at the end of its life cycle. It feeds on the host (fish) then reproduces and dies. The new offspring find a host, and so it goes. So unless while in the free-swimming phase of the life cycle, it happens to go through the UV, it's still going to be there.

There is no substitute for quarantining new fish, and even at that, sometimes disease will still sneak through. Quarantining before placing in the display saves a lot of time and waste.

Jenn
 
Unfortunately i too have went through this. I got a flame angel some years back that introduced it, and all of my fish were dead within two days. Brooklynella is BAD news! sorry for your losses and good luck!
 
This also just took out most fish in my 180. I havent had anything in awhile, but am determined it was from a tank swap. (I swapped up from a 120 to 180) I tried metronidazole, nitromidazole, and kanamyacin.

Nothing worked.

I lost 20 fish in a matter of 2 weeks.

I have three fish that showed signs of the infection then recovered. And I have 4 fish that never showed signs. Every fish I had showed different symptoms. Some looked like yours, others had hemmoraging (sp), some had turned completely white, and others flesh just fell off in patches.

Suprisingly when I decided to give up trying to save them, stopped doing waterchanges, and stopped caring is when they stopped dying. I believe what hit my tank was bacterial.
 
Good news today. My yellow tang and goby are still living and looking marginally better. My wrasse seems unaffected. Still not out of the woods but hopefully will not lose everything. I am seeing an unusual red fibrous algae spring up on my substrate so i am using phosguard to cut the possibility of to much phosphate. I'm also adding carbon to my sump.

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