Need help identifying fish fungus/parasite

[D3R3K]

I noticed what I am pretty sure was ich on one of my gobies 3 weeks ago, so I moved all my fish to a hospital tank and started treating with hyposalinity. The visible ich parasites are no longer on the goby (i never saw any on the other fish) and I haven't seen any ich in about two weeks, until this morning I noticed some white spots on my flasher wrasse. This looks like it could be something else other than ich, but I am not an expert. I've had the salinity at 1.009 since the Oct 6th, so if this is ich, I am going to have to abandon hypo and try copper.

Can anyone help me with identifying these white spots?







Even my 1 1/2 year old son is worred!




1. How old is this aquarium?

Set up a new 210 and turned this tank into a QT/Hospital tank. I removed all sand and live rock, but the existing filtration (including Seachem Matrix) has been running for about a year.

2. If less than six months old, what is ammonia level?

Ammonia levels are at 0.0

3. What is SG of this aquarium? How measured?

SG is 1.009

4. When was the last fish added to this aquarium?

Added a tamarin wrasse about a month ago. I think this fish introduced the ich, as I had never seen any traces of ich before.

5. Was it quarantined? If so, how? And how long? Was it prophylactically treated? How?

No.

7. If you are using hyposalinity, how did you calibrate your refractometer?

With distilled water to calibrate at zero.

8. Please describe in detail, the appearance of the fish? If there is one or more pimples, are they lumpy? What color?

There is a single white spot on the cheek. The previous day, there was a cluster of white marks on the top of the head. I thought it might have been a bite mark from another fish as it looked like a scuff at first.

9. Please describe the behavior of the fish as best you can. Is it acting reclusive? Is it always up towards the top of the aquarium? Is it avoiding light? How active is the fish?

Has started to act reclusive and is usually a very active swimmer. It laid down for a few minutes this morning, which is unusual for this particular fish to do when the lights are on.

10. Is the fish eating? What?

Fish is still eating. Mysis shrimp and new life spectrum pellets.

 

[D3R3K]

Added Q&A from sticky.

 

[Newsmyrna80]

I am no ich expert but those spots look too big to be ich. Is the fish scratching at all or shaking its' head?

 

[MrTuskfish]

If you had ich, this is the ich showing itself again. Ich just doesn't go away, you have to kill it. I'd ask the mods to post this in the disease forum.

 

[HumbleFish]

Two possibilities: Lymphocystis (a virus), or a secondary bacterial infection (probably gram-positive) from Ich. At this point, I would just keep the water clean and soak his food in vitamin supplements (Selcon, Zoecon, Vita-chem). There's a good chance his immune system can beat this with a little help. But beating Ich is another matter all-together.

If it gets worse, then you may need to treat with antibiotics. But being I don't do hypo... I can't tell you whether or not you can safely use antibiotics in conjunction with hypo.

 

[D3R3K]

If you had ich, this is the ich showing itself again. Ich just doesn't go away, you have to kill it. I'd ask the mods to post this in the disease forum.

This is in the disease forum :jester:

I am attempting to kill the ich through hyposalinity (3 weeks in)

 

[D3R3K]

Two possibilities: Lymphocystis (a virus), or a secondary bacterial infection (probably gram-positive) from Ich. At this point, I would just keep the water clean and soak his food in vitamin supplements (Selcon, Zoecon, Vita-chem). There's a good chance his immune system can beat this with a little help. But beating Ich is another matter all-together.

If it gets worse, then you may need to treat with antibiotics. But being I don't do hypo... I can't tell you whether or not you can safely use antibiotics in conjunction with hypo.

Thanks for the info! I am hoping it's not ich as that would mean this entire hyposalinity treatment procedure isn't working against this particular strain.

 

[HumbleFish]

Thanks for the info! I am hoping it's not ich as that would mean this entire hyposalinity treatment procedure isn't working against this particular strain.

I'm not gonna bash hypo, as everyone has their favorite method. But if you do some research you'll find a lot of people on here report Ich coming back after what they thought was successful hypo treatment. I suspect many possible reasons for this: their refractometer wasn't perfectly calibrated, the SG crept up past 1.009 for a short period of time during treatment. There have even been documented reports of hypo resistant strains (see quote/link below).

More recently, studies have demonstrated different salinity tolerances among strains of Cryptocaryon. Yambot (2003) described one Taiwanese outbreak occurring in sea bream Sparus sarba at a salinity of 5 g/L, and another outbreak in sea perch Lates calcarifer occurring at a salinity of 10 g/L. These two strains were successfully propagated in the laboratory at 7 and 10 g/L, respectively, and are well below previously documented preferred salinities.

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fa164

 

[D3R3K]

I'm not gonna bash hypo, as everyone has their favorite method. But if you do some research you'll find a lot of people on here report Ich coming back after what they thought was successful hypo treatment. I suspect many possible reasons for this: their refractometer wasn't perfectly calibrated, the SG crept up past 1.009 for a short period of time during treatment. There have even been documented reports of hypo resistant strains (see quote/link below).



http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fa164

Thanks! Yes, I read about those potential issues and tried to mitigate them to ensure success. I calibrated and did multiple tests with my refractometer to make sure it was accurate and I have an auto top off that keeps the SG locked.

 

[D3R3K]

The flasher wrasse is looking much better today! When I got home from work, my sharknose goby was riding around on the wrasse cleaning the spots. They are still visible, but look much improved.