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Holzandy
05/16/2016, 11:10 AM
My 3month old wrasse has started hiding in the last few days and I have noticed some brownish reddish marks on him looks like something has taken a chunk out of him. As I said he has been hiding a lot of the time but he does come out when he sees us to get food but does not eat anything like he normally does. As soon as we walk away from the tank he goes back under his rock!

Holzandy
05/16/2016, 11:11 AM
Another pic

Bent
05/16/2016, 11:42 AM
Part of me wants to say it's an infectious process, and part of me wants to say it's predatory.

What tank mates does he have?
How long and what was his QT regimen?
What has he been eating?
How much and often does he get fed?

These cleaner wrasses do not historically have a outstanding record when it comes to long term success. I think I may be coming up on 6 months with mine and I'm still holding out hope that he will be successful.

My observations have been that they need fed heavily. I have an autofeeder that feeds 3x a day a mix of freeze dried mysis, some omega flakes, omega mini-pellets, and NLS pellets. I still feed once a week about a half a cube of frozen mysis. Even with all that feeding, homie eats. ALOT. Every time the feeder goes off he's killing it, every time I put anything in the tank he acts like he's never eaten before. Even with all those calories he's not fat, at all. I'd even say he's a tad on the thin side and that's with a pretty hefty population of pods and mysis. This tells me that either he has a severe calorie demand, or a pretty crappy digestive system (No pun intended lol), or both.

So it very well could be an opportunistic pathogen if he is malnourished.

Holzandy
05/16/2016, 12:52 PM
Ther is just 2 clowns in with him he was in qt for 2 weeks been in small 150Lt main tank for about 10 weeks with no problems always eating the millions of copepods we have in there he always eats about 5 - 8 times a day from us by hand sometimes more! Every time he sees us he wants food we normally let have as much as he wants from a syringe, mostly brine shrimp with garlic but he sometimes eats a bit of flake

Bent
05/16/2016, 08:00 PM
Ther is just 2 clowns in with him he was in qt for 2 weeks been in small 150Lt main tank for about 10 weeks with no problems always eating the millions of copepods we have in there he always eats about 5 - 8 times a day from us by hand sometimes more! Every time he sees us he wants food we normally let have as much as he wants from a syringe, mostly brine shrimp with garlic but he sometimes eats a bit of flake

First of all, brine shrimp are a very poor food selection and definitely do not have the needed nutrients. I would suggest ditching those asap and feeding some more nutritious foods like mysis shrimp, some quality flake, tiny pellets, or puréed grocery store slop. Also the garlic is very bad for fish and causes liver damage and should only be used to train and entice a feeding response, not as a supplement. Selcon is a superior supplement for fish.

Secondly What species of clown?

I'm leaning toward a fungal infection. 3 months in, it's possible it could have been there, from the beginning and just wasn't very visible.

Typically when they are "fuzzy" like that it tends to be more fungal. Pic diagnosing is hard, but I'm going with fungal.

Fungal infections in fish are typically secondary to something. Pathogenic fungus is abundant in the home aquarium and typically the fish have a sufficient immune system to fight it off. Stress, and poor conditions weaken the animals immune system and the infection gets the foot hold it needs. So do some testing and make sure nothing is severely out of whack in there. Plus aggression can cause stress as well, so if the species of clown are super aggressive it could also be causing the problem. As mentioned before, brine shrimp have almost no nutritional value and contain minuscule amounts of calories, he may very well be malnourished if that is indeed his primary food source.

Take him out, put him in QT and start a anti-fungal like kanamycin (kanaplex I think is the brand name). Some people use pimafix and Melafix with success, but they are all natural remedies and from dealing with human diseases, I have a tendency to not suggest them as much. Some people swear by them though, but I have no personal experience. I do know that kanamycin and other aminoglycosides are effective at treating fungal infections.

On a side note, metronidazole is also readily available, and though I have used it both prophylactically and as treatment for gram negative anaerobic bacteria in fish with success in the past, I have not used it for fungal infections despite using it extensively for such in humans. There is also plenty of independent studies out there that support and indicate the prescribing of metronidazole for fungal infections in humans, such information is not as readily available for fish, but in theory it should work as well if everything translates.

Hope this helps.

Bent
05/16/2016, 08:29 PM
Last post extensively edited.

Dmorty217
05/17/2016, 09:19 AM
Nitrofuracin Green powder can also be used with great success with open wounds. Needs to be in a QT/Hospital tank like Bent mentioned

Bent
05/17/2016, 12:21 PM
Nitrofuracin Green powder can also be used with great success with open wounds. Needs to be in a QT/Hospital tank like Bent mentioned

glad you agree, hard to tell from pics.