Pomacanthus gill spike

[maxxII]

Gary,
You're not new to this hobby or to keeping fish, and you definitely know your own fish's behaviour.....

But I gotta say, this doesnt look necessarily like HLLE to me. I've seen alot of cases of HLLE throughout the years, and that doesnt look like it to me.

That appears to me to be minor scraping near the eye, or pigmentation loss just above the...which admittedly does happen in HLLE initially...but it just doesnt look like HLLE to me. The nasal pore on Junior, (IIRC that is his name?) doesnt look appreciably enlarged beyond growth...

I could be wrong, I'm just looking at pictures here on the net.....but that's just my take.

Nick

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

thanks for all of your input, Nick.
I'm sure that your eye has also noticed the fact that this fish is still developing it's full adult coloration.

 

[maxxII]

Yeah I caught that but didnt want to come off like an internet "know it all" to you of all people...

Sometimes the patterning/ coloration of fish can appear like disease...

I have an Indo-Pacific Regal angel that I've had for two years now....

Here is a link to pics of it. When the small bar first began to develop, it looked like small blister or contusion from a distance...naturally, the fish was shy and not willing to let me get a closer look to verify.

I just had another thought after looking at the pics of my Regal...you can see damage and mis-marking in the rear anal fins of the Regal. This was caused by a close encounter with my Ritteri anemone.
Any chance Junior had a brief run in with your Gigantea?

Nick

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

my Emperor routinely pokes around the anemone to gain access to anemonefish eggs but I'm sure that it's gill spike abrasion isn't related to this activity.

JMO: there's no such thing as a "know it all" when it comes to this stuff however there are certain people that are more knowledgable than others

 

[JHemdal]

I had to laugh at myself - these old threads can trip a person up. I started with the first post, and didn't look at the date, but thought to myself - wow, this is hauntingly familiar, and that sure looks like atypical HLLE to me, and then I read down to my own response from like a year and a half ago - Whoa!

Gary,
In re-reading all this - I had made the assumption that the opercular spine lesion was mirrored on the other side of the fish as well...some degree of symmetry is almost always seen in HLLE...but if the other side of the fish did *not* have a lesion, then HLLE is less certain, and a simple skin injury is more likely. That said, the enlarged nares in your fish from then to now sure seems like a very minor case of HLLE to me as well.


Jay

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

the opercular spine lesion was mirrored on the other side of this fish making some degree of reversal of atypical HLLE a possibility in this case

now I wonder if I can get those nares to fill in.

Do all fishes have nares? What are they used for?

 

[JHemdal]

Gary,

Anatomy is not my strong suite, but my understanding is that nares=nostrils and that fish use them to smell with, but not for breathing like in most other vertebrates. It is a fairly common location for HLLE to form in some species.


Jay

 

[SDguy]

I see a pit forming in front of the eye here:

 

[SDguy]

Ooops, never mind, didn't read Page two