Disease ID

[lakai]

My tomini tang went from fine to lying on the sandbed with white splotches. Tank params are normal as usual, I notice my purple tang low energy unlike usual as well. If anyone can help id the problem so I can treat accordingly I would appreciate it.

Thank you

 

[vetteguy53081]

May be brooknella. Hard to tell from photo. If not crypto. Either way a treatment such as praziPro will help. So will a freshwater dip.
A water change will not hurt and what is your tank temp/salinity?
Had a club member with a salinity of 1.025 and had losses to find his thermometer was at 79 but tank at 74 and salinity was actually 1.020 when tested at a local LFS

 

[lakai]

May be brooknella.

I thought brook makes them slimy ? Don't think its ich as he and the others in the nano have been fine in the tank for the last 3-4 months. I took it out and put it in a bucket of fresh salt water with airstone for now until I can get a ID on the problem. Temp 78.

 

[jelazar]

The most likely culprits to exhaust your fish with few physical symptoms (white dots) are velvet and brooklynella. There are strains of both that have very subtle physical symptoms, and they're rampant in the hobby. Still possible but less likely are ich and external flukes. Ich usually has visible dots, and flukes take a while to wear down a healthy fish.

For any of these parasites (velvet, brook, ich, flukes), I would run the same treatment.

Start with a 5 minute freshwater dip. If the problem is a sever fluke infestation, it will be obvious at ~3-4 minutes. If it's not flukes, the FW will help reduce the number of velvet/ich/brook present. FW will not cure any of these parasites, however. You fish may panic but you shouldn't.

Then start treating the fish in a hospital tank with chloroquine phosphate.

If you don't have CP, treat with copper. Copper doesn't work for brook. If you know it's brook, do a bath in formalin first. But velvet is more common than brook, IME.

There are excellent stickies and posts on how to do these dips, dosing levels, duration, etc. in the "Fish Disease Treatment and Diagnosis" forum.