Thx. It could be flukes but I thought they were pretty translucent and these are very visible? Also no one else seems to show any signs of flukes and certainly nothing that looks like what’s on triggers skin. A bit of a mystery although yes the cleaner was cleaning something. Might try hypo (1.008/9)as I remove the copper with water changes. I understand hypo for 10 days will kill live flukes and egg hatchlings.WOuldn’t be too costly to dose prazi as it is 1 oz per 125 gallons so only 5 oz to treat 625g’s.
Correct - you typically cannot see flukes, but you can sometimes see the damage that they cause. Hyposalinity works for Neobenedenia (the toughest fluke to deal with) but the time frame needs to be 35 days, at half salinity (so a specific gravity of around 1.012). I can't tell you if 1.009 will work faster or not, the issue is that you need to keep the eggs from hatching until they die. I would advise against going down to 1.008 SG, you will start to see more edema in sensitive fish. Also, be extremely careful what salinity measuring device you use, and confirm its calibration with a known standard. I use a German glass laboratory hydrometer. Remember that Uronema sometimes crops up during Hypo, so keep things clean - siphon detritus, no uneaten food, etc.
Or: to isolate him to definitely rule out aggression (I'm only going down the road for flukes IF aggression can be 100% ruled out).
I’d have to remove most of the rock to do that. When u have a 625g with 400 lbs of rock, its almost impossible to catch a trigger who wedges himself in the rocks as soon as you put your hand in the tank because he is sick. Prior he used to eat out of my hand as the crosshatch still does. Again no other fish are showing any signs of flukes or discomfort...eating and thriving...
I’ll do a water change and go with prazi. Fingers crossed as I have had very mixed results with prazi in the past. Thx.
I totally understand and appreciate your help and thoughts. This hobby is certainly not an exact science especially when it comes to treatment.
So - some species of flukes are pretty specific to the type of fish they infect. Triggers are quite a bit different in their scale/skin structure than most other aquarium fish. I would not be at all surprised to have a trigger develop a disease that other fish won't catch. My concern here is the worsening of the symptoms. Without an "end game" I'm just worried that things will progress further, to the detriment of the trigger. I do not see any reason that if possible, you couldn't isolate the trigger for treatment alone. I wish I could give the fish a skin scrape and look at it under a scope that would probably tell us pretty quickly what is going on here!
