Help identifying HLLE

[jgranata13]

Here's a video of my flame angel (sorry, my family was being really chatty lol):

https://vimeo.com/124841272

You can see it better in the second half of the video, but I've noticed that the front of her head is sort of fading to white and "deteriorating" (that's the best word I can think of to describe it). I would say that it sort of reminds me of the texture of tripe :/

The back of her dorsal and anal fin (where the blue is) are missing, but I thing that may be because her and my royal gramma have some tension and sometimes this one will fan her tail right in front of my royal gramma's face, so it would make sense that that's where the gramma would nip her. Other than that though, nothing else seems out of the ordinary.

I had Chemipure Elite in there since I set up the tank in August, and I took it out a few weeks ago when I noticed her head started to fade in colour. I figured it was HLLE since I've heard angels are quite susceptible, but then the colour started to come back a bit (this was still before I took out the Chemipure) and it was also too faint to get any pics. I decided to monitor it, and now it's getting worse. I figured the Chemipure was the cause since the carbon is so fine.

I'm doing a water change tomorrow and I'm just about to test the water so I'll post params in a bit. Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[jgranata13]

Sorry, the video lost a lot of quality in posting. Also, here's my tank thread for background: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2477581

 

[Dmorty217]

Really hard to tell from the video, I would suggest feeding enriched food with selcon at least I use Vitachem too. HLLE is usually caused by something lacking in diet,stress or carbon dust or any combination of the three

 

[jgranata13]

Here's the params. These are all the things that I can test for/monitor.

Temp - 79.2F (no variation whatsoever)
SG - 1.026

These are all done with Seachem:
Ammonia - undetectable
Total Ammonia (Includes Ammonium) - undetectable
Nitrite - undetectable
Nitrate - ~1ppm
Alkalinity - 2.5meq/L = 7dKH (this one surprised me - it's usually 4-5meq/L = 12.6dKH)
pH - below 7.8 (that's where the scale bottoms out - it's always been around 8-8.1 but never this low. Still trying to figure out what's up)
Phosphate - < 0.05ppm

 

[Dmorty217]

I wouldn't worry too much about PH,I haven't checked PH in my tank ever. Do you run carbon or have you checked for stray voltage in the tank?

 

[jgranata13]

The only carbon I have right now is some Matrix Carbon, but I haven't had a chance to do a water change since I took out the Chemipure because I'm on exams so at this point it's sort of like I haven't really done anything to remedy the situation.

I read about stray voltage being a theorized cause a while ago but I completely forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me. Any advice on how to check that?

I just want to make sure that this isn't something worse like a bacterial/fungal infection that needs specialized treatment. I haven't been able to find anything online that has similar symptoms, but can anyone chime in on this if they can think of any?

 

[Dmorty217]

Can you take a picture and post it? I saw the white blotches your referring to but without being able to see them more clearly it's hard to diagnose. The stray voltage can be check with your run of the mill multimeter, I will caution you that there will probably be some in the tank more than likely. How much is too much is hard to say since there isn't really studies that have been done to link the two or how much is too much for that matter. I would do a water change whenever you can. The carbon could be the issue since all carbon has dust to it (some more than others) but there are a lot of people who use carbon without any negative effects such as HLLE. Try and post a pic if you can and in the mean time start enriching food with selcon at least if your not already. Try and keep up on water changes and water quality

 

[Dmorty217]

Also are the white blotches raised up or textured looking in anyway?

 

[jgranata13]

Help identifying HLLE

I posted the video to YouTube in HD: http://youtu. be/RPaeyBB_Ha4 (copy and paste the link and remove the space)

Here are some pics I was able to get:



In the second one, that "slit" on her gill cover is also white and looks similar to the other lesions. In the third picture you can see how they're clusters of smaller lesions rather than larger ones.

I almost wonder if her skin is just deteriorating and the white is her skull showing through. They're not raised; they actually go inward.

 

[Dmorty217]

Honestly the more I look at the pictures it may be fin rot. It's difficult to say 100% since pics are less than telling more times than not. Maybe someone else will chime in