Melanurus wrasse fin degrading and turned red.

daftbeni · Sep 26, 2021

Hello. I’ve had Rocket (melanurus wrasse) for over a year now and everything was fine till today. I came home from 4 day camping trip and noticed rocket could barely swim. Upon further inspection his left fin is 80% missing and the remainder of it is turning red. The right fin is still mostly intact but also turning red. The body of rocket also looks like it’s becoming discoloured. Rocket was in such rough shape it was extremely easy to net him as he didn’t have much strength to swim. I currently have him in a 5G QT setup (I can’t set up anything larger at this point in time).

I did research and came to the conclusion that it’s bacterial(all other fish are fine so I don’t think it’s ammonia burns and my parameters are fine). I went ahead and dosed with supratect as I live in Canada and don’t have access to the good stuff.

anyone have any other suggestions to what I can do? Or maybe I’m wrong with my diagnoses. Open to all advice !!

blaxsun · Sep 26, 2021

Nothing's been picking at him? Hang in there Rocket!

daftbeni · Sep 26, 2021

blaxsun said:
Nothing's been picking at him? Hang in there Rocket!

No fish picking on rocket at all. Him and my Tomini Tang were the alphas in the tank and no one messed with them.

Jay Hemdal · Sep 26, 2021

daftbeni said:
No fish picking on rocket at all. Him and my Tomini Tang were the alphas in the tank and no one messed with them.

With wrasses, they rely so much on their pectoral fins to swim with, Rocket is going to be having a tough time of it.

Acute bacterial fin rot is pretty rare (using starts with some sort of damage) but it does happen. Too bad you can't get true antibiotics. I've never used Supratect, but I suppose it's better than nothing.

Jay