Spots/flakes on achilles tang cheek

[nibkia]

I noticed my achilles tang what looks like flashing against the bottom of the tank and decided to take a closer look at him and saw what looks like a rough patch or flaky skin on his face .

The tank is 2 1/2 years old
There are only 5 fish in the tank and they have been there since the start. Achilles, powder blue, orange shoulder, mata tang, and a blue chromis. All went in fully qted in copper and prazipro and have never displayed any signs of disease i haven't added any coral or new equipment in the last year.
No other fish are displaying symptoms of any kind.
It seems localized to only the right cheek.
No obvious change in mood except some vary sparse jerky movement i've never noticed him doing before
I've had fish with ich and velvet before and it doesn't look like that.
No major fluctuations in parameters aside from bumping the temp from 76-77 to 77.5-78.5
Salinity 34.4
alkalinity 6.8
I will gladly provide anymore needed information. Thanks in advance

 

[vetteguy53081]

I noticed my achilles tang what looks like flashing against the bottom of the tank and decided to take a closer look at him and saw what looks like a rough patch or flaky skin on his face .

The tank is 2 1/2 years old
There are only 5 fish in the tank and they have been there since the start. Achilles, powder blue, orange shoulder, mata tang, and a blue chromis. All went in fully qted in copper and prazipro and have never displayed any signs of disease i haven't added any coral or new equipment in the last year.
No other fish are displaying symptoms of any kind.
It seems localized to only the right cheek.
No obvious change in mood except some vary sparse jerky movement i've never noticed him doing before
I've had fish with ich and velvet before and it doesn't look like that.
No major fluctuations in parameters aside from bumping the temp from 76-77 to 77.5-78.5
Salinity 34.4
alkalinity 6.8
I will gladly provide anymore needed information. Thanks in advance

While it looks to me like bristles from a bristleworm, it can also be sand particles.
Achilles notorious for velvet but dont think it is that either.

@Jay Hemdal

 

[nibkia]

While it looks to me like bristles from a bristleworm, it can also be sand particles.
Achilles notorious for velvet but dont think it is that either.

I definitely have seen some very small bristle worms before in the tank none bigger than a accouple millimeters at best. And i removed all the sand about 4 months ago but there are some patches of bigger granules left. Although he often swims directly at the powerheads to eat algae off them and it has not seem to blown off.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

It looks like scrape marks to me, could be bristleworms. Unlikely that flukes have started up in this tank after this length of time, but have you added any invertebrates in the past few months?

Jay

 

[nibkia]

It looks like scrape marks to me, could be bristleworms. Unlikely that flukes have started up in this tank after this length of time, but have you added any invertebrates in the past few months?

Jay

I have not added any new inverts within the last year. Today the marks are still in the same spot but have seemed to turn from a group of smaller flakes into a couple bigger ones.

He's still flashing although only on the other side of his body.
All other fish in the tank still look perfectly fine.
Still no obvious change in behavior except for the flashing.
There's are various rough patches and scrapes on other parts of his body but none look bad and are barely noticeable I'm assuming these are from the flashing.

 

[nibkia]

It looks like scrape marks to me, could be bristleworms. Unlikely that flukes have started up in this tank after this length of time, but have you added any invertebrates in the past few months?

Jay

And the white blouch they have on their chin seems to be more prominent then normal but this could just be me seeing things

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I just don't see an avenue for flukes to get into this system - but sometimes, flukes can hang out as a chronic infection and suddenly flair up. I guess the two choices are to just observe the fish for new signs, or to run a course of Prazipro in the tank to see if it clears up any flukes. If you go with the latter, you'll need to add aeration to the tank, keep the skimmer running, but don't collect skimmate, stop carbon filtration and UV. Dose once, then dose again 8 days later.

Jay