Sickly Lemon Coral Goby

[Xefan]

Hi,

I'm fairly new to this, my tank is only about 2 and a half months old and all was going well until the weekend just gone when I noticed my lemon coral goby had white spots on it. I researched and I don't think it's ich, certainly all the other tank members (2x Anthias, 1x Flame Angel, 1 Purple Fire Goby) still seem fine and completely healthy and free of disease 5 days later, but it did look like lympho.

Today however I noticed that the goby's fins have gone black in patches, which look like bloody lesions on inspecting a close photo, and the face looks particularly grey, which I think is due to an increasing woollen like growth on it.

Sorry for the poor quality pictures, but hopefully they help. Any idea what this is, or what I should do to treat it?

Water looks clean, skimmer and UV filter are running, Ammonia is fairly low, below 0.01 at about 0.004, Nitrites are 0, PH is about 8.2, salinity is a little low at 32, and the only real problem is nitrates which keep zeroing out, though I think this is because I'm in the ugly stage and there's daily algae growth on the glass eating them up as soon as they're created, though I have increased feeding a little as I believe I may have been slightly underfeeding previously, so hopefully this helps.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, really hoping I can save this fellow.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

This isn't Lymphocystis.

Marine ich looks different at different stages, and can infect some fish before the others in a tank. I can't rule out what I call "stale ich" on the goby - where it has had ich long enough that you start to see secondary bacterial infections, and the spots all run together. It is a bit unusual to see ich in the late stages with NO spots on any other fish, so examine them very closely.

I don't suppose you have a treatment tank available? Anything you might do to treat that goby needs to be done in an isolation tank.

Can you post a video of the whole tank, and then closeups of the other fish? That can help with the diagnosis, or at least rule some things out.

Jay

 

[Xefan]

Hi Jay, thanks for your response.

I don't have a treatment tank unfortunately, though depending on what it requires I may be able to rig one together I guess.

Here's some pics of all the other fish and a video of the aquarium in general. Again, apologies for the poor quality, I have years of experience photographing fish in the sea, but can't for the life of me get good pictures of them through the aquarium glass

A note on the flame angel - he did have a big white mark in the middle of his forehead a few days ago, it's still slightly visible but pretty much entirely healed. I think rather than disease though this was just damage from chasing one of the Anthias which he did every once in a while and hitting his head in all honesty. The Anthias have only been in since Friday and thankfully he's pestering them much less now he's gotten used to them.

 

[Xefan]

Actually to add, if it helps, this is how it started on the lemon coral goby last Saturday, so you can see the change in disease between the picture from today and then. The stuff on the body has disappeared now for the most part so far as I can see, but it's gotten worse around the face and fins compared to this picture from a few days ago.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Hi Jay, thanks for your response.

I don't have a treatment tank unfortunately, though depending on what it requires I may be able to rig one together I guess.

Here's some pics of all the other fish and a video of the aquarium in general. Again, apologies for the poor quality, I have years of experience photographing fish in the sea, but can't for the life of me get good pictures of them through the aquarium glass

A note on the flame angel - he did have a big white mark in the middle of his forehead a few days ago, it's still slightly visible but pretty much entirely healed. I think rather than disease though this was just damage from chasing one of the Anthias which he did every once in a while and hitting his head in all honesty. The Anthias have only been in since Friday and thankfully he's pestering them much less now he's gotten used to them.

Thanks for the clear pics and video. These don't show anything alarming to me. I am left wondering why the goby looks the way it does, without other fish showing at least minimal symptoms.

You could try giving the goby a five minute FW dip, on the off chance that these spots are from flukes, not ich.

Jay

 

[Xefan]

Thanks Jay, that's something at least.

Could any of this possibly result from lack of food/poor nutrition? I've literally never seen this goby eat, but I don't know if it just eats when I'm not looking, and I'm not sure if I can/should encourage it to eat somehow.

I'll have a think about doing an FW dip, I'm not sure how easily I'd be able to catch the goby and I don't want to risk over-stressing it, and our tap water here is quite hard with limescale - I only have RO or pre-mixed salt otherwise so I'll mull over whether I can put together an appropriate container and such.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Thanks Jay, that's something at least.

Could any of this possibly result from lack of food/poor nutrition? I've literally never seen this goby eat, but I don't know if it just eats when I'm not looking, and I'm not sure if I can/should encourage it to eat somehow.

I'll have a think about doing an FW dip, I'm not sure how easily I'd be able to catch the goby and I don't want to risk over-stressing it, and our tap water here is quite hard with limescale - I only have RO or pre-mixed salt otherwise so I'll mull over whether I can put together an appropriate container and such.

Hard tap water is perfectly fine to use as a FW dip, but catching the goby would be a challenge - you don't want to stress/injure it just to do the dip.

I doubt that diet (or lack of) has anything directly to do with this, the spots do look more like some sort of parasite.

Jay

 

[Xefan]

Sadly woke up to find it dead on the bottom this morning, shrimps had started picking at it so got it out ASAP and disposed of it.

I'm guessing I need to keep an eye out for spread to other fish now for a while, presumably with it dying and the shrimps picking at it, whatever was on it could now be free in the tank? Is there any general rule of thumb on how long something like this could hang around in the tank and infect other fish before I can breathe a sigh of relief? I'm loathe to add anything else in or change anything for a while until I'm confident it's all clear.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Sadly woke up to find it dead on the bottom this morning, shrimps had started picking at it so got it out ASAP and disposed of it.

I'm guessing I need to keep an eye out for spread to other fish now for a while, presumably with it dying and the shrimps picking at it, whatever was on it could now be free in the tank? Is there any general rule of thumb on how long something like this could hang around in the tank and infect other fish before I can breathe a sigh of relief? I'm loathe to add anything else in or change anything for a while until I'm confident it's all clear.

Sorry to hear.

At a minimum, don't add any new animals to the tank for 14 days, 30 is safer. You just want to observe the remaining animals closely every day for signs of similar problems.

Jay