Possible Bacterial infection

[90 gal fish only]

I am having trouble getting rid of what appears to be a bacterial problem, and have lost a few fish.

I have a 90 gal fish only, with about 80 lbs of live rock, wet/dry trickle filter, skimmer, and 25 watt UV sterilizer.

I have been fighting this problem for about 2 months now, and can't seem to get the upper hand.

It started with the death of a blue bird wrass. When I pulled him out, he had severe fin rot and sloughing scales/open sores in his abdomen. At the same time, my large 6 bar Angel, Queen Angel, and blue-face angel started showing signs of fin rot, and then my blue line grouper started showing signs of fin rot along with some kind of possible parasite. The grouper has small white spots, which don't appear to be Ich. No other fish seem to havve these white spots These are all fairly large fish. My large purple tang and tomato clown have shown no signs of problems.

The next fish to go was the Queen Angel. The fish died very quickly, and had been feeding the previous day. Whatever this is, I can't seem to get rid of. I have treated with Maracyn for a week, switched to Furacyn for a week, and am know on my second week of Maracyn II, which appears to be helping slightly. Attached is the picture of the six bar and problem areas. Note the damage on the fins. The yellow side fins are stubs. The tail is a bit ragged also.

Any ideas? These fish have been in this tank for about 4 years. All water conditions are fine, I do about a 20 gal water change with RO water once a month.

Thanks!

 

[90 gal fish only]

If anyone is interested, I thought I would post my own reply because I finally found out what the problem was with these angel fish.

After no luck with general antibiotics for type 1 and type 2 bacteria, I was at witts end and talked at length with my local fish supplier.


The problem is the parasite Hexamita, which after treating the tank eliminated the problem. I likely introduced the parasite into the tank when I purchased a new fish...............

For future reference, what appeared to me to be "fin rot" was actually the parasitic organism eating the fins of the fish. According to my discussions with my fish supplier, the difference between bacterial "fin rot" and hexamita, is that there are not any lesions or "bloody fins" associated with the parasite.


Hope this may help anyone with similar problems, because this one was a bear............

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the information. Welcome to reefs.org (sorry I wasn't around the past couple of days to give you a proper greeting!), 90gal, I'm very sorry that you lost these fish.

This is a really good argument for religious quarantine procedures! It's terrible that you had these fish for several years, apparently otherwise quite fat and healthy, only to lose them so quickly, all because of one fish. I'm curious, is that new fish still around?

If you can outline how long this took, when you first notices manifestations, medication that helped, and any other pertinent information (including everything you've learned about this), I'd like to archive this very short thread.

 

[90 gal fish only]

No problem - The grouper is still alive who started all this mess.

This problem manifested itself for about 7 months before I finally figured out what the problem was. All of the fish in the tank were about 3-5 years in my possession, so all of them except the grouper had been around for awhile.

When I introduced the grouper, all the fish in the tank were fine. About a month after introduction, I noticed that my blue bird wrass wasn't looking so great, and that my Queen Angel was starting to loose the long trailing fins that are on her tail. All of my large fish are around 6 inches long, with the large 6 bar angel about 10 inches.

I continued to watch for increasing problems, and finally treated the tank with Maracyn (UV on, skimmer off, no charcoal, etc). It appeared like it may have helped a bit, but the continual errosion of the fins kept progressing.

Well, all this time I was thinking bacterial problem. so after two months of noticing the problem, I treated the tank a second time with Maracyn II after a pretty healthy water change. I thought I may have licked it, but the problem kept progressing. At this time I lost the wrasse, and he was in extremely bad shape. He had been hiding in all the live rock in the tank, and I didn't notice he wasn't out for awhile. Before he died, he had a severely swolen abdomen, and the fine filaments of almost all his fins looked like they had disentegrated.

Because of the severe shape of the Wrasse, I was still thinking bacterial. Shortly thereafter I lost the Queen. The thing that baffled me was loosing the queen. One day healthy, eating, swimming around normally, the next morning dead in the tank.

Now we are about at 3 to 4 months, and I am starting to get confused. I have some pretty good references on fish diseases, and I have fought quite a few of them. What was confusing was how did the Angel die seemingly overnight, when the problems with the other fish just seemed to prgress at a very slow pace.

Well, another big water change and a switch to a more general antibiotic (trade name Furacyn). I did two recommended treatments, and still no improvement. Whatever I put in seemed to hold the problem down a little, but after a week off the medicine the problems progressed more rapidly.

Now we are about 5 months into this, and its back to Maracyn II. Again, pretty much the same results. Appears to be helping, but after the dosage is done, the problems progress.

Well, now I start to see problems with my large purple tang, who along with a large tomato clown are the two fish that have shown no problems during the entire ordeal. The tang was showing signs of lateral line errosion, and my references did not have the source of this disease (I guess when it was printed they may not have known what it was, just recommended vitamin C). From what I gathered on the internet, this disease is caused by hexamita as well (??). I have only dealt with Ich or bacterial problems, so I have never dealt with this parasite.

Well, the recommended treatment for hexamita did the trick, and the fish started growing back all their fins.

So at the end of the day, I still can't precisely say there were not two problems with the tank(because the wrasse appeared to have some possible bacterial problems, but the queen appeared to have hexamita). The fish you see in the above pictures responded well to the hexamita treatments, and the queen had the same symptoms but died unexplainably.
And the moral of the story is if you have a well established tank you better quarantine...................."and that is the rest of the story"

 

[fishfanatic2]

Thanks for the info on the disease. Sorry to hear about all the fish that died.