Overnight fin degradation

Labridaedicted

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Hey guys,

So my orange spotted bristletooth tang has had an odd thing happen. It is not like the usual fin rot I have seen or experienced before as that usually is slower. Here's the story.

I added the fish to the dt approximately 2 weeks ago. Behaved normally and grazed all day. Only blemish was a cut it received from another tang at the store. That is healing fine and already has new scales coming in over it. Here's a picture of him from then...

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You can see the cut but the fins look great and he is healthy.

Thursday, I dosed the DT with prazi as 2 fish showed some fluke symptoms. Those fish are doing great now. The issue is that within 24 hours of dosing prazi, the tang became more skittish and hid alot. He also wasn't out grazing as he was previously. I figured it was probably just stress from the meds or maybe some fluke die-off on him. The tank only has 5 fish in it and they're all fairly small and the total system is about 350 gallons. Ammonia stayed undetectable during treatment and nitrates stayed low (appx 2ppm). Ph stayed in the regular zone of about 8 and I left the skimmer running but removed the cup to keep o2 levels up.

Well, day 4 of treatment rolls around and everything looks good, including the tang who still looked perfect despite the skittishness. Morning of day 5, the tangs fins had deteriorated significantly, so I started setting up the qt but needed to mix salt and get it up to temp, but I turned the skimmer back on and got carbon running.

We're on day 6 now. I have the qt ready to go, but now the tang is out cruising and grazing with mild fin damage. As you can see in the pics.

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An issue I have observed with this fish is that it has always just grazed and I rarely see it eat mysis or anything, so I have concerns over putting him in a qt.

Have y'all seen fin rot with this kind of rapid onset before? I have bifuran to treat him with if necessary. I have a feeling that qt might stress him more especially since he seems to be acting normally, now.

What is y'alls thoughts?

18377.jpeg
 

Humblefish

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Flukes will sometimes feed on the fins, but a secondary bacterial infection could also be to blame. That cut doesn't look like it's healing too well to me and could be the source of the infection, which is now spreading to his fins.
 
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Flukes will sometimes feed on the fins, but a secondary bacterial infection could also be to blame. That cut doesn't look like it's healing too well to me and could be the source of the infection, which is now spreading to his fins.
Would you recommend treating with bifuran or perhaps another medication?
 

melypr1985

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That cut is suspiciously located directly on his lateral line. That may just be bad luck for the fish though. I agree. This looks to be a mild infection at this point (could get significantly worse) and will probably be pretty easy to kick with 10 days of antibiotics. It's a good time to get him eating really well with frozen foods and nori while in the QT as well. That insures he stays healthy after treatment :)
 

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I am treating my tangs which had pretty substantial fin rot with medicated food. It has taken a good month and all but a little section on my Yellow tang top fin is healed.

Angelsplus.com Antibiotic food has Kanamycin and Antibiotic II has tetracycline. The first for gram negative the other for gram positive. I have been feeding each one twice a day. Once it all heals I'll discontinue the feeding.
 

melypr1985

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I am treating my tangs which had pretty substantial fin rot with medicated food. It has taken a good month and all but a little section on my Yellow tang top fin is healed.

Angelsplus.com Antibiotic food has Kanamycin and Antibiotic II has tetracycline. The first for gram negative the other for gram positive. I have been feeding each one twice a day. Once it all heals I'll discontinue the feeding.

Yes, feeding antibiotics can work for mild cases.... it just takes sooo much longer.
 

jkapit

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Yes, feeding antibiotics can work for mild cases.... it just takes sooo much longer.

yes, it has taken a while but I need to clarify. My fish were in the display tank already which has a few corals so I chose medicated food vs. treating the whole tank with a total of 220 gallons. I did not want to kill the biological filter, and it would be expensive to treat that big a tank with kanamycin.
 

Saltyanimals

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Say after 10 day treatment, does everyone put the fish back into DT or leave in QT to allow time for the tail to grow back. My concern is that I don't want to keep a fish in QT longer than necessary. Assuming the meds treat the fin rot what are the chances of reinfection back in DT? Meaning is there free floating bacteria that can infect the fish again like say ich?

Thanks,
 
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It's never a bad idea to keep them in observation a few days beyond the treatment end. Let's you make sure the Infection is really taken care of. Plus it allows you to fatten them up if they had any loss of appetite from the disease.

As far as time to grow back; as long as the rot didn't reach the body tissue, the fins will actually recover very quickly. This guy looked better by the end of treatment with most of his fins recovered.
 

Saltyanimals

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That's the challenge. Visually looks like at least it stopped the infection. Hard to tell, but given the fish isn't dead and flesh rotted away I would say it has improved. It never really lost appetite in QT so looks like a candidate to return to DT, but wanted some opinions. Thanks!
 

4FordFamily

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That's the challenge. Visually looks like at least it stopped the infection. Hard to tell, but given the fish isn't dead and flesh rotted away I would say it has improved. It never really lost appetite in QT so looks like a candidate to return to DT, but wanted some opinions. Thanks!
My rule is at least a week observation after any treatment, I do 2 weeks almost always, however.
 

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QT your fish and feed him some metronidazole fins should heal in a few days
 

Saltyanimals

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I caved and put him back into DT about 9 days ago and still kicking. Strange part is one side of his tail looked almost brown like rotting fresh which was concerning but the yellow is starting to come out last couple days. I think the brown was part of the healing process. In either case he’s happy and competing for food with the big boys. Hopefully all is well. Will watch for another couple weeks before I call it cured. Ironic. Cured fish without a full tail. Lol
 
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