3D white spots on clown

[genotype]

My clowns have a few spots on them. When they turn to face me I can see the spots sticking out from their bodies. One of the spots is hanging off the end of a pectoral fin. I don't have any experience with fish disease, none of my FW fish has ever had one, that I knew about anyway. I'm new to SW and nano-reef.com with an otherwise happy aquarium.

 

I'm assuming this is either ich or a parasitic pod. Just noticed a nitrate spike so that might have something to do with it. I'm doing 10% - 20% water changes every other day to get rid of the nitrate. No nitrite or ammonia. SG 1.022, pH 8.2, temp 78.

 

I'll be moving the fish to a hospital tank and leaving them there for probably a month. I have a watchman goby that my reefer friend said will not get the ich -- assuming it is ich -- for whatever reason. Will the goby be ok in the main tank? No use stressing the goby out w/ tank removal and meds if he won't get it. I have inverts and soft corals in the main tank also.

 

My friend (who also is in charge of the SW tanks at my LFS, is an avid hobbyist and terrible salesman, i.e. he discourages more than he encourages, not sure how they make any money) suggested Paraguard in the hospital tank. The main tank should see the parasite dying off after a month or so due to the lack of fish in there, correct? I've read that the salinity should be 1.019, but at what rate do I get the salinity down from 1.022.

 

I'm thinking I might be more stressed than my fish right now. Thanks for any help.

 

Oh BTW, isn't this something my cleaner shrimp should be taking care of? Should I fire him?

[RayWhisperer]

Welcome to N-R.com, and to SW as a whole.

 

First things first.... List all the water params, as in, nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, phos, cal, alk, and the others you have already given. Also tell us how long the tank has been up, and how long it has had fish. Not to mention how often you do water changes, and how large. This will help people in determining a cause, so future outbreaks won't be so likely to occur.

 

It sounds to me like ICK. I would think if the goby has a healthy enough immune system it should be able to ward off ick. I'm hoping this isn't a fresh tank(as in less than fully cycled, atleast a month)... The other will probably do best in a hospital tank.

 

Hyposalinity(lowering salinity) would also work. You could lower the SG by dilluting the SW with fresh R.O. water on a drip. I would think 1 pt SG per day would be relatively safe, just don't keep it this way any longer than needed, I just don't know what the effect would be on the shrimp.

 

The cleaner is probably eating it, your just not seeing it do it... If not, how much are you feeding the tank? A shrimp that is too full would be less likely to do it's job.

[genotype]

Thanks for getting back to me. Params:

 

pH 8.2

NO2: .01

NO3: 15

alk: 3 meq/L

NH3: 0

NH4+: < .o2

temp: 78

24g NC

10g refugium (half full)

SG: 1.022

don't know calc, I use reef crystals.

phos should be low, I use R/O D/I.

 

It's been up for 2 months, fish for 1 (or less). I do weekly water changes of 3 - 5g a week, but have been doing them every other day lately due to a nitrate spike. Just put in about a cup of caulerpa until I can get some chaeto in there (in the refugium).

 

I live in the desert so evaporation happens quickly. I usually top off around 20 oz. in the morning and sometimes at night. SG fluctuates between 1.0215 and 1.023 because of this, but is usually between 1.022 and 1.023. I'm trying to get something together to reduce this bounce.

 

A good friend used to manage a fish store, but he specialized in FW. In his somewhat limited SW experience he doesn't seem to think the spots look like ich as they're too big. They're a little fuzzy and stick out about 1mm. They've gotten bigger since I last posted, and there are a few more spots. Some research is leading me to believe it's a fungus, but then again I'm inexperienced. Is it possible to treat them for more than one thing just in case?

 

Hospital tank is ready to go. Don't want to do that unless I'm sure it's necessary b/c I don't want to stress the fish more than I need to. Thanks for your help!

[genotype]

I posted at WWM and got a response. Not sure why I'm suprised, just figured that they get swamped with questions, so didn't bother at first. But Bob seems to think it's brook, and as it's advanced a bit it's starting to look like the pictures of brook I'm seeing online.

 

So, I removed the clowns and put them in a 20 long, half full of water, with the recommended amount of Paraguard. Paraguard b/c even though everyone says treat brook with formalin there are plenty of posts that talk about how harsh formalin is. Paraguard touts itself as a formalin alternative. Plus Skye008 has had some success with it. I'm not going with hyposalinity as I'm gathering hypo won't help with brook much. I'll leave them in there for 30 days or so. Going to leave a separate post asking about the life cycle of brook as I'm not finding info about how long to leave the tank fallow, if at all.

 

I should mention at this point that I finding so many opinions on so many of the same symptoms that it almost seems that you just have to take the shotgun approach towards research and try and synthesize an answer from all the info one finds. I feel like there should be some bayesian filter which can search all the info and come up with a probability as to what the disease is and what the proscribed treatment should be. That would be cool. It'd be a ###### entering in all that data, though.