Something is eating the flesh from my chromis

Hey guys,

I am not having a great past week in reefing.

I lost a royal dottyback and flasher wrasse for what seemed no apparant reason a couple of days ago.

Yesterday, I noticed my blue chromis had what looked like a bit, or a scrape out of his side. Only small. You could sort of see where the skin had been scraped away and it looked like scratch marks.

Today, It is about a whole third of the chromis left side. Way quick.

I have zero idea what it is.

My paramaters have only been steady (Ammo: 0, Nitrate: 0, pH: 8.2, Sal: 1.026, Calc: 480, Alk: 8.2 and Mg 1250. and I am doing 10% water changes a week as part of my algae management plan and the algae is nearly gone. But so seems my fish....

The thing I have just thought of when writing is is stray voltage? I recently had one of my powerheads off, but still in the tank for a little bit when my very new nem attached to it whilst on the move. And my dad did say he saw my dotty back (before death) swim into one of the holes and did not see it swim out.

Im pretty clueless guys. I cant get a good pic at the moment because its lights out. But will attempt to get one sometime tomorrow.

Do I remove the fish? I would hate for it to be transmissable or something...

 

Any chance you have a bad hitch hiker like a Gorilla Crab or something. Is the flesh litterly melting. If its more cuts something is doing it to the fish. What other fish are in the tank?

 

Loosing the prior two fish and the symptoms on the chromis make me suspect the same culprit; either a bacterial or fungal infection(s).

 

Have you added a new fish recently? Take a look at "uronema" and see if it resembles the scratches. Here is a picture of what I am pretty sure was uronema to one of my banner fish in QT.





If it is this (which I hope it isn't), a formalin bath is about the only thing effective (use the same treatment as brook). Copper didn't phase this at all for me.

 

That does look every similar dunc. I added a royal dottyback which has seemed to kick off the death spree.

Do you think it is worth removing the chromis to prevent it spreading to other fish?

 

If its a bacteria how can I kill it?

 

I believe maracyn 1 with a combo of maracyn 2 if it is bacterial. If it is uronema, however, it is a parasite. If it is spreading among other fish, I would tend to think that it is more of a parasite than bacterial, unfortunately. The only real treatment for uronema seems to be formalin which should be introduced ASAP in a QT (dosing in the DT would likely kill your reef... don't bother in the DT). Unfortunately, formalin is very hard to find these days for some reasons. I have seen formalin MS available at petsolutions.com but if it is uronema, the fish would likely be gone by the time it got here. Another viable solution is to get some meds which have formalin in it. Quick Cure (usually on the shelf at walmart in the fish section) has formalin in it and is what I would use if I saw this again.

For a timeline for you. From the time I first saw visible "gashes" on the fish when it first caught it until death was approx. 3 days. I had 2 other banner fish in the QT at the same exact time that caught this.... I lost all 3 with it taking about 1 and a half weeks total for them all to die (again... about 3 days for each fish once I saw visible signs of it). Because it was spreading in the QT, is what leads me to believe it was uronema. I also did not have Formalin on me at the time... I instead tried cupramine (copper treatment) to no avail. FWIW I also had some prazipro in the water.

IMO, you have 2 options... maracyn 1 + maracyn 2 or formalin/quick cure. I would probably try the latter... Formalin is very harsh on the fish, so watch it very closely. Again... if you go that route... use a QT as it will kill your bio filter...

FWIW, google chromis uronema. In the past, I have heard chromis getting this more than any other fish. With that said, uronema seems to be pretty rare and not a whole lot is known about it from what I found when doing my research with my bannerfish...

Post a picture if you can as it may help.

I hope this helps... sorry for the long response.

 

Thanks a lot for your effort in responding . I am not sure I can get formalin in time. What do you think the chances would be of it infecting my other fish in the tank if I left it in there? If its high I will remove it. But I don't want to remove it without knowing how contagious it is.

 

Your fish have already been exposed, the horse has left the barn.

Foramlin is a pretty common product but not to be used in situations with open wounds, it's extremely toxic.

If one chromis is affected and all else is good with the fish I would consider myself lucky. I do not like any animal to suffer, but this will not be the last chromis that kicks the bucket on you unless you stop buying them completely.

 

The fish died this morning and was removed. The other fish, a flame angel, royal dottyback and an oscellaris clown show no signs of infection etc.

Hopefully this is where it ends.