Please help identify what’s om my regal angel?

[Snof]

Hi everyone,
I hope someone can help me identify what is/was on my regal angelfish.

Background:
I have had multiple fish twitching and shaking their heads and scratching, mostly on the head near the gills. Furthermore some have white stringy poop. Flukes? I have done 4 rounds of prazi and fed with metronidazole and fenbendazole, but it didn’t clear fully. Fish were dropping dead every day. All had empty stomachs. Butterfly, all anthias, genicanthus angel and majestic angel. Thinkinh it could be something else, maybe velvet or uronema, I medicated with CP.
Some got bacterial infections. I then medicated the tank with kanamycin. This cleared the bacterial infections, but the fish wouldn’t eat anymore after about 2 weeks. I filtered with carbon to take all medications out. Fortunately most are eating again, but not the medicated food. Some begin to scratch and twich again.

During treatment I was able to catch my regal angelfish and treated with a bath with kanamycin, furan2 and metro 3 days in a row. I noticed this was really helping him.

All pictures I find of flukes show flukes are larger, velvet is supposed to be round and ich would be larger. Schould I dose metro to the display tank?

Could someone tell from the pictures what the creatures are on mainly the fins, mouth, eyes en gills?
Thanks in advance.

Day 1:


Day 2:


Day 3:

 

[Jay Hemdal]

This is a case where pictures simply can’t be used to identify the issue, a microscope would be helpful. I bought a cheap one for my phone that cost $16.
Coming in to the case after it has been going on awhile is also tough. Have you tried freshwater dips on the fish? That will often show Neobenedenia flukes (the larger ones). Other flukes are too small to see with the naked eye.
Velvet, Amyloodinium typically shows as rapid breathing, then glassy eyes and dusty skin, followed quickly by death. Cryptocaryon/ich starts as salt sized spots, but no rapid breathing and the fish still feed, to a point, then it starts to look like velvet.
What damaged the angel’s caudal fin?
What fish are still alive?
Are any showing symptoms?
Jay

 

[Snof]

Thanks Jay. will look into a microscope.
I did a fresh water dip before the rounds of prazi and found no flukes. I read that they could be in the gills so I treated to make sure. This was before any fish died. I have had velvet and ich before and it didn’t look like it.

After a couple of days the butterflies and anthias started to deteriorate and also breathing heavy like you say. But also got excess slime and spots appeared. The spots also appeared on my other fish, like my regal angel, zanclus and even cirrhilabrus rubeus. I knew that my anthias and wrasses wouldn’t handle CP well, so I still tried to medicate through food with metronidazole and later fenbendazole and kanamycin also. Within a day or 2 all anthias (bimaculatus) and butterflies (semilarvatus, burgessi and xanthurus) died. The semilarvatus had some red markings along the fins. I figured from internal infection. My genicanthus bellus had a swollen eye, which also pointed at bacterial issues. It died shortly after. I started CP and kanamycin. The navarchus died also. Things settled down a bit, so I thought I had it under control until my fish stopped eating.

On the regal I found it was odd to just find these spots on some areas on the body. Somehow it cleared up after the baths I did. Could they be flukes? Or are just neobenedenia visible and others are not? I haven’t found pictures like this of flukes.
The caudal fin was getting eaten away. It started with white markings en then became red. The fins are starting to grow back.

Still alive are my angelfish (Regal, blueface, goldflake and chrysurus), wrasses (bilartitus, cleaner and rubeus), zanclus cornutus and Centropyge bispinosa pair. I can see no visible spots on any fish. The angel and bipartitus wrasse a scratching. I am afraid it will start all over again.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Ah, I need to clarify - CP stands for two meds; copper power and chloroquine phosphate....which did you use?

Flukes vary in their difficulty to manage, they also vary tremendously in size. Severe infestations can result in secondary bacterial infections, so I’m sort of leaning that way, but as you know, this is a complicated situation.

Jay

 

[Snof]

Chloroquine phosphate. It was my last bit, so it is not an option anymore.
Thanks for your feedback. It is complicated indeed, but now I have a direction to steer in.
Could metro help against these flukes? It seems to have helped the regal angel a lot. I also have fenbendazole on hand.

I took al corals and snails and hermits (that I could find) out of the display already before I treated with chloroquine, so that is ready to go.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Chloroquine phosphate. It was my last bit, so it is not an option anymore.
Thanks for your feedback. It is complicated indeed, but now I have a direction to steer in.
Could metro help against these flukes? It seems to have helped the regal angel a lot. I also have fenbendazole on hand.I took al corals and snails and hermits (that I could find) out of the display already before I treated with chloroquine, so that is ready to go.

Metronidazole would not be expected to have any effect on flukes. I’ve had 3 acute toxic reactions using Fenbendazole in water, so I’ve stopped using it. The toxicity is species based, and doesn’t seem to include many species like angels tangs and anthias, but I can’t risk it.
Jay

 

[Snof]

Hmm ok, I read a post of you regarding gobies and fenbendazole. I also have that same experience. With hoger dosage of prazi I have had bad experience with macropharyngodon wrasses. Difficult to decide what to do. Maybe I can slightly up the dose of prazi to about 3 mg/liter or use a low dose of fenbendazole of 2 mg/liter or even lower. I will research it some more. Thanks a lot for helping.