Black bar reef chromis

[waltersizzle]

Have been trying to introduce black bar reef chromis into my 125 gallon reef tank but having high mortality.

I ordered 7 from live Aquaria and only Some of these didn’t look great. Missing tails and a big red spot on one of them. Treated them with paracleanse and maracyn but I only one of them survived quarantine. I kept it in quarantine and ordered 12 more: 2 were doa but the other 10 were in good shape except for one had a red circle on its side. Treated with paracleanse and maracyn and only 5 of these fish made it through quarantine. So 6/17 that I ordered made it into the big tank. It has been a few weeks and I only have two left.
I would like them to live because I think they are fascinating fish and they really fill in the blank space.

Tank mates:
Melanarus wrasse
Flame angel
Valentini puffer
Purple tang
Yellow tang
Flame hawk
Clown fish
Fire shrimp, urchin,crabs

these fish are all pretty chill and I hadn’t seen any aggression towards the chromis. But I have fed the puffer/hawk/wrasse cherry shrimp that aren’t much smaller than the chromis.

These fish are tiny. They can easily fit through the guards on the power heads. The culprits are, killed and eaten, they are still sick - or they swim into the powerheads. I think it’s the powerheads. They appear to be healthy.

Any experience with these fish? Should I just try a bigger species? Should I try longer quarantines and try to grow them out?

 

[Tahoe61]

Are they coming to you with Uremia?

 

[Michael Hughes]

It sounds like they're coming to you with Uronema. Its essentially a parasite that eats the fish and its organs from the inside out, and by the time those red lesions appear, it usually means the internal infection has progressed to lethal (or very nearly so).

There's a great thread about this over on humblefish's forum.

Standard QT treatment involves formalin or possibly Rally Pro, but these may not cure infected fish - they may just limit the spread to non-infected fish.

It seems this has become a huge problem with chromis as the parasite seems to be ubiquitous, and the whole capture and stocking process seems to create the perfect conditions for the parasite to thrive.

This is one frontier of fish medicine that really needs a breakthrough.