Flame Hawkfish Death

KeepSwimming12

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I wanted to make sure that I’m not going crazy so I can prevent this in the future. My flame Hawk started breathing heavily the other day and stopped eating. He’s always been a beautiful red colour and I noticed half of his body had turned white, not the colour, but because the scales had been ripped off. I thought he might’ve been sick so medicated for flukes with prazi. He unfortunately died around 5 days after the onset of symptoms which is really disappointing. My blue tang had always been obsessed with my flame Hawk and followed him all around the tank to the point of it looking creepy and the flame Hawk getting quite annoyed. Is it possible that this was actually aggression and the blue tang was swiping its tail against the flame Hawk this whole time? I haven’t added anything new to the tank for around 4 months which is why I’m pretty confident it isn’t a disease.
 

Timfish

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Sorry to hear your loss. :( Keep in mind disease processes can take a long time to present themselves. It may not have been one of the handful we can readily identify but your hawkfish may have had a probelm before you acqured it. Unfortunately we can't do even the rudimentarty testing vets can do with cats or dogs.

To be honest in all the years I've been keeping reef systems I've never seen all the scales ripped off the side of a fish without it being dead, if this was the case I'd have to think it was some kind of bacterial infection under the skin that caused the scales to fall off. Any attack by another fish or something else to rip off the scales I have to think would have killed the hawkfish outright.
 
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KeepSwimming12

KeepSwimming12

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Sorry to hear your loss. :( Keep in mind disease processes can take a long time to present themselves. It may not have been one of the handful we can readily identify but your hawkfish may have had a probelm before you acqured it. Unfortunately we can't do even the rudimentarty testing vets can do with cats or dogs.

To be honest in all the years I've been keeping reef systems I've never seen all the scales ripped off the side of a fish without it being dead, if this was the case I'd have to think it was some kind of bacterial infection under the skin that caused the scales to fall off. Any attack by another fish or something else to rip off the scales I have to think would have killed the hawkfish outright.
Yeah you’re definitely right. I’ve dealt with flukes, Ich and velvet before and these symptoms didn’t fit those diseases. I’d hate to think that my blue tang was tormenting it but you’re probably right that much damage would probably be fatal pretty quick. I wish there was an easier way to know sometimes it’s frustrating not knowing if it’s your fault or something that couldn’t be helped.
 

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