Is this a parasitic infection? Help needed please

[MalekNas]

Hello.

Back story: About 5 days ago i bought a secondhand 15 liter bowl tank that has been up for 3 to 4 months. It had 1 cleaner shrimp and 2 clowns, no other livestock. I was planning to sell the fish and make it corals only. 2 days ago one of the clowns died which i thought may have been due to the stress of moving them from their previous owner to my home. Today i noticed these white spots on the remaining clown. You can see them infront of the dorsal fin, on the head, and there is a mucous like white blob right on the fin.

I understand this may be a parasite like ich, brook or velvet.

My question is, if the little guy ends up passing and the tank remains fallow (no fish, only inverts and corals) for many many months, would this kill off any parasites and their eggs, regardless of whether it is ich, velvet or brook?

My understanding is that these parasites need a fish host to survive and without one, they perish.

Thank you guys in advance!

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Hello.

Back story: About 5 days ago i bought a secondhand 15 liter bowl tank that has been up for 3 to 4 months. It had 1 cleaner shrimp and 2 clowns, no other livestock. I was planning to sell the fish and make it corals only. 2 days ago one of the clowns died which i thought may have been due to the stress of moving them from their previous owner to my home. Today i noticed these white spots on the remaining clown. You can see them infront of the dorsal fin, on the head, and there is a mucous like white blob right on the fin.

I understand this may be a parasite like ich, brook or velvet.

My question is, if the little guy ends up passing and the tank remains fallow (no fish, only inverts and corals) for many many months, would this kill off any parasites and their eggs, regardless of whether it is ich, velvet or brook?

My understanding is that these parasites need a fish host to survive and without one, they perish.

Thank you guys in advance!

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

The picture isn’t quite clear enough, but the spots look like an early stage of an ich infection. If the other fish had a lot more spots than this, it probably died from the infection. If it didn’t have hundreds of spots on it, it may have died from some other issue.

If a tank is left empty of all fish for 60+ days, any fish parasites will die out.

Jay

 

[vetteguy53081]

Im not ruling out ich as mentioned by jay but seeing what may be bacterial lesions often associated with brooklynella and spreads across the body producing lesions as it progresses often confused with ich and can turn into secondary bacteria. Other symptoms will be lethargic behavior, refusing to eat and heavy breathing from the mucus if so.

 

[MalekNas]

Im not ruling out ich as mentioned by jay but seeing what may be bacterial lesions often associated with brooklynella and spreads across the body producing lesions as it progresses often confused with ich and can turn into secondary bacteria. Other symptoms will be lethargic behavior, refusing to eat and heavy breathing from the mucus if so.

The symptoms you mentioned are all present. I guess it may be brooklynella. The odd thing is that the first clown died overnight, no warning signs and no spots (not that i noticed at least). Also the guy that sold me the set up denied any breakouts in his tanks and claimed that these clowns lived with him for 4 months with no problems.

 

[MalekNas]

I will be going fallow for 2 to 3 months, if not more. I may just make it an inverts and corals only tanks. These parasites are ruthless and a pain in the butt. Thank you for your response.

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

The picture isn’t quite clear enough, but the spots look like an early stage of an ich infection. If the other fish had a lot more spots than this, it probably died from the infection. If it didn’t have hundreds of spots on it, it may have died from some other issue.

If a tank is left empty of all fish for 60+ days, any fish parasites will die out.

Jay

 

[vetteguy53081]

The symptoms you mentioned are all present. I guess it may be brooklynella. The odd thing is that the first clown died overnight, no warning signs and no spots (not that i noticed at least). Also the guy that sold me the set up denied any breakouts in his tanks and claimed that these clowns lived with him for 4 months with no problems.

Start with a prolonged 60 minute bath of ruby rally pro then at a lower concentration in a quarantine tank. The longer the fish are exposed to the treatment, the more effective it will be at eliminating this issue.
Since a formalin solution is often not available for use, temporary relief can be achieved by giving the fish a FW bath or dip in water same temperature as display tank. Even though this treatment will not cure the disease, it can help to remove some of the parasites, as well as reduce the amount of mucus in the gills to assist with respiration problems.
Treatment is best done in a QT tank using either quick cure (more effective but now harder to find) or Ruby Rally Pro. Ruby takes a little longer and initial treatment generally takes 2-3 days to really start going to work.

 

[MalekNas]

Unfortunately the 2nd fish just died a few hours ago. I guess the best thing to do now is to go fallow for 2 or so months.

What I am curious about though is how come the fish lived for months with the previous owner but barely made it 1 week with me? Could the previous owner be lying about the duration? Or could it be that the disease was "contained" and as soon as I moved the tank to my house the stress exacerbated the disease?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Unfortunately the 2nd fish just died a few hours ago. I guess the best thing to do now is to go fallow for 2 or so months.

What I am curious about though is how come the fish lived for months with the previous owner but barely made it 1 week with me? Could the previous owner be lying about the duration? Or could it be that the disease was "contained" and as soon as I moved the tank to my house the stress exacerbated the disease?

It is REALLY common for latent diseases to become acute when fish are moved - the added stress of the move allows the disease organism to grow out of control.

 

[MalekNas]

It is REALLY common for latent diseases to become acute when fish are moved - the added stress of the move allows the disease organism to grow out of control.

Yeah this is what I was trying to tell the first owner but he insisted I did something wrong somehow lol. Thank you for the help guys.