Need to know ich or velvet on my PBT

jacmyoung

Premium Member
I am doing full tank hypo right now because my PBT I added as my last fish brought what appeared as ich to my tank. The ich was passed on to other fish. I let the situation remain for over a month hoping good food and water quality could do some cure but finally decided I must take more drastic measure.

The tank is on the second day of reaching 1.009 salinity, all my fish look fine now except the PBT, which still has many spots all over the body and rough skin look, but the spots are discrete not dust like and are white not brown. And BTW this rough skin and many white spots have been going on with my PBT for nearly a month continuously after his introduction and never seemed to slow him down, he still eats like a pig and is active. Also no other fish had the same longer lasting appearance like this PBT even though they all had ich on and off in the past month. Come to think of it my yellow tang's condition at one point looked like my PBT but he recovered nicely.

But if they do not disappear from my PBT in hypo, do I assume it is velvet? If so isn't velvet more lethal and PBT would not have survived under such condition that long? For example my YT above would not have been cured from velvet on his own, could he?

If velvet is the diagnosis, should I start copper treatment for my whole tank? It is FOWLR. I read that at this stage if it is velvet it is likely too late for treatment anyway.
 
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Amyloodinium (Aka Velvet) is a faster progressing disease and if your fish had any respiratory problems then I would tend to think they would have passed withotu treatment; hypo is not effective for velvet.

Here is a link (in case you haven't come across it from reading on velvet http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-07/sp/feature/index.php

Do you have or can you take a pic of these fish?

If you use copper even if it is a FOWLR inverts are very sensitive to it and you probably will not be able to host them in that tank again. Not to mention it can kill good bacteria in the tank too.

I lean towards the side of ick as PBT are notorious ich magnets and what you are probably seeing is them feeding and falling off and bredding in the tank and reinfecting. That is why he always seems to have the spots.

However like I said a pic would be best.
 
Thanks for the replay, I sure hope it is ich. I have tried to take a picture but my lowly camera did not do well, will read the camera manual to see if I can improve my skill, I wanted to document this one with a picture too.
 
I would tend to think it is... A pic would help.

good luck keep updating or if anything changes..

(your my neighbor, I have some horses in Elverta).
 
Tried again with my camera without much success, it is just not good enough to catch him in fast motion under low light and still show the spots on him, however as I type my PBT is showing clear progress, only a few spots left and he started to again "flash" himself in front of other fish like he used to do. Cross my fingers.

Thanks Hattie B for giving me peace of mind. Lovely horse you have there.
 
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