HLLE healing - in 3 different tanks!?

[SDguy]

How is this possible? The subjects:

1. Yellow longnose butterfly that I've had for a couple years now. Started in my FO, moved to my reef, and now in QT awaiting a new home. Had pits since the FO... they never got better, not even in the reef.

2. Tomini tang that is 6+ years old in my reef. Slowly developed slight HLLE over about a years time.

3. Asfur angel that is several years old in my FO. Developed moderate/severe HLLE over a few months.

As of today, the tomini only has a couple tiny pits remaining, the yellow longnose has pits filling in, and most noticeably, the asfur has huge pit areas filling in on both sides.

Obviously the only similarity between these tanks is the salt and activated carbon. Other than a few months on the FO and QT, salt has been IO the whole time. I did recently switch carbon, from BRS activated lignite to special grade bituminous. That said, I cannot correlate GAC to HLLE, since during the time the yellow longnose and the asfur both developed it, neither time was I using any carbon on the tank. So what gives?

Thoughts?

 

[michael_cb_125]

I am a little stumped in your case, but here is my experience with HLLE.

I have had my pair of Bandits for several years now. For the first year I ran a large amount of Seachem Carbon in a reactor. I started noticing a few pits on the face of both fish. I removed the carbon and after about three months both fish started healing and now there are no signs of HLLE.

I really do believe that carbon is either the cause of many cases of HLLE, or it is removing trace elements needed for total fish health....


~Michael

 

[tylersarah]

I acquired a large Tomini with severe HLLE from a friend, I stopped running carbon to see if the fish would improve and sure enough. Then I tried running a little bit of carbon and the improvement stopped.

 

[tylersarah]

I would like to add that I am still not running carbon and the tomini tang's HLLE is now worsening.

Additionally, I now have a GHA outbreak and I feel there's a correlation between nitrates/phosphates and the HLLE. Going to do extra water changes and see if the fish improve.

 

[alton]

Over 5 years ago I had a Chevron tang that I grew from a very small juvy. Every tank he was in was algae free due to his love for algae, including lip marks on the glass. He would not eat algae sheets, so I borrowed him to one of my fish stores to put in there display tank that was covered in hair algae, after 8 months the hole in the head was gone and so was the algae. About that time they started carrying Zoe so I started soaking his food in that and it never came back? I had him until a year ago when I moved a qurantined fish too fast into my display tank and it released an unknown disease into my tank killing several fish.

 

[MrTuskfish]

There have been some fairly convincing studies relating carbon (mostly the dust, if I remember right) with HLLE. I think we could name a dozen things that have been blamed; but there isn't much, other than anecdotal evidence, that seems to support anything. Fenner or S. Michael supported the carbon idea too---I can't remember where I saw it though. Too lazy/busy to search myself.

 

[SDguy]

Here you can see how it has healed on the asfur....

Originally:

Today, while transferring into a new tank:

 

[tylersarah]

My theory is HLLE has to do with water quality.

While my Muelleri butterflyfish was in QT there was no sign of HLLE and I did bi-daily water changes.

Meanwhile, we adopted a bristletooth tang with severe HLLE from a friend that had gradually improved in our tank while we made 15-20% weekly water changes. We backed off to every other week and had a skimmer mishap (it overflowed into the sump a bit) and then noticed the tang's condition began to worsen. And about 10 days after the Muelleri was introduced into the tank he began to show HLLE symptoms. We did three water changes in a 2 week period and the Muelleri has completely healed and the tang is improving slightly.

Have not been running carbon in quite some time thinking it would help the HLLE heal, but I have no evidence of a correlation between the two.

 

[kv2wr1]

I once used lignite and I had a coral beauty get HLLE. I switched back to rox and it slowly went away with the aid of vitamins and water changes. I think this type of carbon is prone to letting out small fines that are hard to see sometimes and can be missed even when the water appears to be running clear.

I have a yellow tang that I got that had HLLE and have now been using vitamins like stabilized C, vita-chem and selcon. It has healed (not 100% still some scaring), but the yellow color is now back where it was white. I do use rox carbon in this tank and do 20% water changes every 5-7 days. Looks and acts like a different fish from when I first got him.

I think water quality and proper nutrition play a vital role in prevention and curing HLLE.