Leopard Wrasse: Natural Mucus Cocoon or Brooklynella/Velvet?

[sawellem]

A little bit of background information:
Late december of 2014, before I learned my lesson about quarantining fish, I added a fish that brought a combination of Brooklynella and Velvet to my tank. I had around 15 fish, (small sailfin tang, damsels, clowns, two small wrasses, etc.) and every fish died by January 15, 2015 EXCEPT two fish, a longnose hawk, and a small dragon wrasse (yes I know I will have to take him out when he morphs). Around January 15th, I started feeding Dr. G's anti-parasitic food which has an active ingredient of Chloroquine phosphate. My understanding of this medicine is that a takes a month to start taking effect after the fish start eating it so I saw it as more a preventative. My longnose hawk was showing signs of the disease but recovered within a week of January 15th, so I decided that it wasn't the medicine that had saved him but his natural immunity. Now that we have the background information out of the way here is my real problem.

Yesterday, I was browsing a local reef forum and a store was advertising an extremely healthy leopard wrasse that was eating frozen like a pig. I decided that after a month of my fish not showing ANY signs of these diseases (keep in mind I had now been feeding the anti-parasitic food for a month) that I would now be able to add a fish. I bought the leopard wrasse after seeing it eat at the store and was excited to add him to my tank. After drip acclimating him for over an hour, I added him to the tank, where he suprisingly swam around for about 45 minutes before diving into the sand.

This morning, as I woke up, I was pleasantly suprised to see him cruising around one side of the tank. I fed him mysis and he indeed, ate it all up.

I came home from school this afternoon, and he was hidden in the sand. An hour later I saw that he was out and about cruising around. I fed again just to get him eaten to help his immune system deal with any stress that he is undergoing by being in a new environment. After eating I watched him dive into the sand, but instead of staying in the sand he would just wiggle around under it and come out after a few seconds. After he stopped doing that I noticed something that really bothered me. He had about two stringy white mucus strings about a centimeter long coming off of his face. He also seems to have a mucus looking build up on the base of his dorsal fin. (The base as in the bottom part of the front of the dorsal fin that connects his fin to his head). After about 15 minutes, I noticed that the mucus strings on his face had gone but there is still some mucus build up on the base of his dorsal fin and in the areas that the mucus has gone away from the base of his dorsal fin seems to be damaged.

Obviously all of these traits are signs of a fish with Brooklynella and/or Velvet.

Did I not wait long enough for the disease to pass before introducing a new fish? Is this just a natural effect of the fish diving into the sand?

This brings me to the title of my thread: Is this just natural mucus from the fish diving into the sand and coming out quickly after wiggling around in it for a few seconds or is this the dreaded disease that layed dormant and has come back to haunt me? Give me your honest opinions!

Thanks for reading,
Sawellem

Additional Info: The fish has been in my system for 24 hours now.

 

[snorvich]

They sleep in the sand and do not form a cocoon.

 

[sawellem]

Would the fish diving into the sand and wiggling around cause a stringy mucus to form?
The fish no longer has the mucus around the base of his dorsal fin but obviously this incident was enough to worry me about the disease being back so it's not just paranoia

 

[sawellem]

A better question would be: Is this just natural mucus from diving into the sand or the disease?

 

[Fragman4]

I would have to say it is the disease. Your fairy wrasses and some others form cocoons but the leopard should not be slimy or have mucus on it.

 

[triggreef]

I'm going to bet some of these guys didn't read your entire post. I did. I don't think you had brook or velvet, because everything would have been dead in days let alone weeks without treating, and I doubt that food would save anything from either of those diseases, let alone both at once. Also, keep in mind, treatment does not mean cure.

That said, I would guess either some water quality issue that went unfounded, or perhaps even a bacterial infection of some sort most likely did in the majority of your fish.

As for the leopard, probably not the best choice to add one so soon after all that went down. The reason most likely that he continues to wiggle and then re emerges from the sand is that there isn't enough sand and he is trying to get deeper, unsuccessfully. Sometimes when fresh out of the sand they will have a bit of sand stick to them. I've seen it on mine around their face especially. It generally falls off within a few minutes of them coming out of the sand. It doesn't sound like you have anything to worry about at this point if you aren't seeing spots or blemishes on your other 2 fish. Those would be the hardy ones out of what you had listed.

I would hold off at least another month before buying any more fish, and you really should quarantine, which you now know. If you hold off it will give you time to make sure there are no resurgences of whatever happened before.

Also keep in mind with leopards, sometimes they seem to do well for a few days and then die out of nowhere after a week or 2. So if that happens, I would not necessarily contribute it to that last major fish loss.

 

[sawellem]

Thanks for reading the post and easing my nerves. I've been checking him out non-stop and his colors are better today then they were yesterday, and he continues to eat like a pig. I do agree that my livestock may have crashed due to a standard bacterial infection and most of my fish lasted about 5-7 days after first showing symptoms of being sick. My sailfin tang and clowns did die suspiciously quickly though. The clowns died after about 2 days of first showing symptoms. The sailfin tang was eating fine in the late afternoon, that night I noticed ich like spots, and in the morning he was dead. The tang obviously may have been more susceptible to a bacterial infection because of him not having scales. Hopefully the Leopard Wrasse thrives and the pathogen that caused death has passed, so that I can have learned my quarantine lesson without any further problems!