Fish dying off and then some

[twiggyb]

I have/had four lyretail anthias in qt. I took a female out this morning because she looked like someone beat her up real good last night. This morning the male looks like he has some scales coming up off of him. I am already dosing the tank with tirple sulfa for a little spot of mouth fungus a female started developing. Whats is the cause of all this? I moved the beat up female to my empty nano that I had set up for a mantis, shes breathing heavily and just laying there on the floor. Hopefully she makes it. My question is, what can I do about the male? I had 3 other fish in the tank before that all died. One had something going on with it's side that had a bump and the scales looked like they were ripping off. It didn't last too long. A few days later I woke up and it had a huge hole in the side of it. The second one just dissappeared for a few days then I found a clean little skeleton of it in a patch of caulerpa. The third I'm not sure if the Anthias just beat it up to death or something went wrong, it was fine one day, then the next I found it behind the rock with it's eyes missing and a little chunk out of it. Please help, any ideas on what step to take next?

 

[JHemdal]

Daniel,

Are you seeing actual aggression in the fish, or just the resulting lesions? The reason I ask is that Anthias are often infected by Uronema, and the lesions you're describing could be that disease. Are you seeing ripped fins on the affected fish, or just lesions on the body? If you see missing scales, but the fins still look good, it is probably Uronema. The rapid breathing right before death is also a symptom. The missing eyes on the other fish is not a symptom of Uronema.

Run a Google image search for Uronema - the picture of the green chromis on the first page is one that I took. I also wrote an article about this earlier this year: Red Band Syndrome. Aquarium Fish International 22(1):26-30, but it isn't available online.

Jay

 

[twiggyb]

The male is constantly chasing the females. I saw him nipping at her this morning and that's when I decided to take her out of the tank. The male has the scales that are coming up it seems like. Then another female looks like she has mouth fungus and her left fin looks just a little ragged. The female that was breathing hard had a red area by the dorsal fin and some scales looked missing underneath that. She was really pale looking. So am I gonna find a dead fish when I get home?

 

[twiggyb]

Well, girlfriend got home and the has passed . Most likely uronema. Gotta see what rest look like when I get home