Help - Sick Tang ?

Wow! That is one funky looking lesion - and for it to appear over a matter of a day or two! It almost looks like the edges have been Photoshopped - did you try to enhance the contrast of the image or something?
You would think that an acute lesion that shows up overnight would still be vascularized - showing blood basically. Chronic lesions (like HLLE) that develop over weeks/months look more like what your fish is showing, gray lesions with a margin of sorts around it.
I can't suggest a treatment because I've never seen anything like that.....

Jay
 
Sick Tang

Sick Tang

It did appear quickly and today the white patches have all lifted off like happens with a blister. His sailfin has also diminished badly. I've done a bit or research on the net and think I might have found the answer. Lymphocystis. Fortunately i's not fatal but I'm having a time trying to catch him. 120kg of LR with plenty of caves. This site gives a bit of info on Lymphocystis but there was another one that dexcribed these symptoms that I can't find my way back to.

http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/disease/lymphocystis.php
 
Noooo, that for certain isn't Lymphocystis. That is a chronic viral disease that shows as small grey or white cauliflower growths that grow very slowly.

Based on the speed that this is going, I don't see how it could be anything but a bacterial disease, except like I said - there isn't any inflammation that one would expect to see with that. The white patches lifting off could have been bacterial plaques - but I don't see how the fish can survive having that much raw tissue exposed to the water....and besides, fish just don't get that extensive areas of bacterial growth without some previous trauma, or at least time for the infection to work its course.

Sorry - I don't have any idea what this could be....

Jay
 
Wish you hadn't told me that. I thought I had it figured out, but thanks. He seems to be doing OK. Swimming, eating etc. Is there any chance it could be a sting of sorts from the large carpet anemone in the tank? The reason I raise it, is that before the lesion lifted, the dots looked a mirror image of the CA's tentacles.
 
Oh - so with each post you give us another clue (grin). So there is a large carpet anemone in the tank - that might changes things a bit! That would account for the sloughing skin AND the discrete margins of the lesions - as well as the fact that the lesion is only on one side of the fish. However, I have never seen a sting reaction covering that much of a fish's body before. I have seen stings that look like the black marks on your tang's dorsal fin though. The location bothers me - most anemone stings are seen at typical "first points of contact" such as the fish's face (if it ploughs into an anemone). So this fish would have had to sort of backed into the anemone upsidedown on its left side to get stung there. What is the orientation of the anemone in the tank?

Jay
 
His foot is on the front wall of a rock, so his whole top faces the front of the tank. Nice of him to do that for us so we can see all of him. And come to think of it, he was relocated to that position after a rock slide about the same time that the tang came out with his marks.
 
Well,

Unless you see signs of a secondary infection (the lesion getting bigger, or taking on a reddish coloration) I think you can chalk this one up to the anemone's sting and see if the fish can heal on its own.

J
 
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