Please help ID this crap

[Western_reefer]

Hello, can someone please help me ID what the heck this is, I've had this blue Flasher Wrasse for two and a half weeks.. and then all of a sudden 3 days ago he had missing scales so I thought he might have gotten into a fight with someone and got hurt or some invert accidentally attacked him or something.. but over the course of the 3 days he got worse and worse to the point where he was just floating around the tank hardly breathing so I ended up putting him to sleep on my own.. but before I did I took a bunch of pictures of him for future reference... I had a banji cardinal also die with the exact same thing about a month before I got this wrasse where I also had the banji cardinal for about a week till it got the same thing.. how can I prevent this, where does it come from/why and why do the fish get it after being in the tank for a lil while? Both the wrasse and cardinal ate like PIGS...

 

[Western_reefer]

Pictures

 

[Western_reefer]

The Cardinal that passed away

 

[JustinM]

Have you ever treated for flukes? Did you ever see any flashing against rocks, sand?

 

[Western_reefer]

They were in copper for about a week.. but how would it appear out of no where after several weeks?

 

[lagatbezan]

are you loosing them in qt or main display? did you mean you only treated for one week with copper or they died while in treatment with copper?

 

[Western_reefer]

So they were in qt in copper for a week and died in the display after a week or two. What is that stuff??

 

[lagatbezan]

was there any lesions where it was missing scales? did the cardinal also have the same symptoms of missing scales or lesions? if so you might be dealing with uronema or gram negative infection. Those are usually fast killers and fit the timeline of death. velvet is also another fast killer and could have been the culprit and the one week in copper just masked it since qt for one week in copper is not sufficient to completely eradicate parasites like ich or velvet. you would need a minimum of 30 days in therapeutic level to be successful.
Also copper doesnt treat for flukes or internal parasites, so usually a min of two rounds of prazoipro or general cure would be ideal as well.

 

[Western_reefer]

No, no lesions that I could tell, just lots of meaty tissue due to all the scale loss.. the infected area has scales that are sticking out at an angle verses the scales being normally flush to the body then over time those scales that are sticking out at an angle eventually come off and tissue is exposed and continues to spread like this until the fish dies... it's definitely not velvet, ick or flukes from what I can tell.. kinda maybe uronema, but didn't look exactly the same from all the pictures I've seen..

 

[lagatbezan]

Don't want to assume its uronema, but what sucks about it is that once it gets into your system its usually impossible to get rid of it! It can live without a host indefinitely and the only way to get it out of your system is by tearing down the tank and sanitizing everything with bleach. again. not sure if thats what you have. It could be also be some type of aggressive infection.
If it looks like the skin has been peeling, it might be brook.
Uronema doesnt effect every single fish, but usually chromis, clown and anthias as well as fish that have been injured or weakened immune system.

 

[Jdub968]

I remember your post on the banggai, did you try removing him from the DT and treating him in a qt ? Although rare in sw the banggai looked like it was fungus. Do you have any other fish in the DT?
For now I would assume this is coming from your Lfs tank and would quit buying from them until you can figure it out.
One week is to short of an observation time in qt to fell if this is something coming in on your fish or is in your DT.