Uronema?? Treatement?

Charles Belisle · Oct 4, 2018

Hello, I am very new to reefing; I just started a 40 gallon breeder with a 20 gallon sump. I was in the process of cycling my tank with 4 electric blue damsels - but one of them has killed the others - fins and tails were tore up on each dead fish. So I moved the aggressor to a smaller section of sump and added 6 Green Chromis to help speed up the cycling. However, the Green Chromis have been dropping like flies. I started with 6 fish and 3 died / so I added 3 more). At this point; the tank is down to 4 out of the 9. It is strange as one fish at a time seems to get attacked / sick. As soon as one dies, a new one gets a sore pictured below. I attached two pictures of two different fish. From what I could tell (Google search) - It maybe Uronema. The fish are currently in my refugium; where I have added bio balls and some Chaetomorpha linum from a LFS - (I now know this was a bad idea). Along with the gifts from the LFS came a few bristle worms - which I have removed and a couple micro starfish. I have verified no other critters are in this section. I thought the star fish some how were attaching the fish; but after some internet surfing I fear the tank has Uronema. Can someone confirm that this is the case? (pictures below). IF so - what can I do to remove it from my tank? Currently, I have 4 blue hermits in DT and about 5 pieces of live rock / with 60 lbs of live sand. I would like to not kill these off. I would like to take a course of action to remove it completely; as I was looking to have a clown fish in my DT. thanks for your help.

CB

HotRocks · Oct 4, 2018

Yes it's uronema.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/uronema-marinum.247940/

The only issue is you can't rid uronema from a reef tank without completely tearing down and sterilization of EVERYTHING.

The fish can be moved to a QT and treated successfully, but they can never go back to the tank they came from.