Help diagnose my fish disease

[vetteguy53081]

No freshwater dip?

While you can to see if any flukes are present, Its not a treatment , but rather confirmation and often you may not see any signs after a dip

 

[W31Olds]

Prazi works fast so a FW Dip is really not necessary, but I would start treatment today.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/dosing-praziquantel-pzq.1105700/

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Emperor angels show these pale areas due to external parasites. Very often, these are flukes, but they can also be from marine ich, Cryptocaryon. I can see some white congestion/spotting on the fins. That is more often a sign of ich as opposed to flukes, but you should have seen some distinct white spots in the days leading up to this point. The trouble is - the typical flukes treatment (praziquantel) doesn't help with ich, and coppersafe works well for ich, but not flukes.

At this point, I think you need to use hyposalinity for both fish - that will treat both ich AND flukes. However, like coppersafe, hyposalinity cannot be used in tanks with corals and other invertebrates. If you can't use hyposalinity because of that, then I think you need to "toss a coin" and treat with praziquantel for flukes.

If you want to try hyposalinity, here is a post I made about that:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/hyposalinity.880546/

Jay

 

[jonelder68]

For context here’s what flukes looks like coming off in a FW dip to confirm flukes presents. Hope you have better luck. The flukes I’m battling seem to laugh at prazipro

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

For context here’s what flukes looks like coming off in a FW dip to confirm flukes presents. Hope you have better luck. The flukes I’m battling seem to laugh at prazipro

Just to clarify - those are likely Neobendenia flukes. Of the three types of flukes that infect fish (gill flukes, Gyrodactylus and Neobendenia), they are the ONLY species that you can see with the naked eye after a dip. The other two types require a microscope.

Neobenedenia flukes are very difficult to stop with praziquantel. They have tough eggs, and prazi only kills the adult flukes. What usually happens is that the prazi kills the adult flukes, but then, new eggs hatch out and reinfect the fish. Multiple prazi treatments can help, but the timing is difficult - even one remaining egg can restart an infection. I usually resort to 30 days hyposalinity to handle Neobendenia....