fish illness??

[AEreefer]

my seaba clown ive had for little over 2 months. he had a little black spot on his fin for the past week, just thought it was a color flaw or something. a day ago he got it all over, just black splotches, mostly on the fins on his bottom half. he thinks my lt plate coral is an anenome and tries to host in it. is it possible that those are stings?? i have a 5" yellow tang and he isnt showing any sign of it. and a couple damsels, pseudochromis, algae blenny. all not showing any signs

[Pandora]

This is just a guess because I've never seen it in real life, but could it be paravortex (also known as "black ick"). I have never heard of it as large splotches, though, so I'm not sure if that matches unless the individual grains are densely converged. Bob Fenner talked about it on WWM once, but I can't find it now. Here's another page on it:
http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/blackich.html

PS: My guess is that they aren't stings. From what I know, plate corals have a sting that is a lot less potent than an anemone's, and clowns build up resistance to that already.

[AEreefer]

ive done research on it and it dosent seem like black ich. a guy at my work today said it could have been that. the fish is healthy seeming as can be, swimming around, out all the time, eating but his bottom half is blotchy black. the tang has absolutely no signs of this.

[Pandora]

Sorry, at a loss, aside from a burn from something (your suspicion). Bump ^ for you if anyone else has ideas...

[AEreefer]

well, i just found something extremely disturbing. i saw my tang crapping out a lot of what looked like worms. clear segmented worms up to 3/4" long. any info on this anyone??

[Pandora]

First I think I gotta http://bouldernet.net/modules/PNphpBB2/images/smiles/i3_vomit.gif. Sorry, I was feeling sick already and that didn't help...

That is disturbing. There aren't a lot of segmented parasitic worms. Nematodes (roundworms) and flukes are not. It's possible that they were tapeworms, which are segmented, each proglottid has its own reproductive elements and can form new worms on its own. I had always thought that when they are defecated out, it's usually the one largish parent tapeworm, though, or the proglottids separately? Either way, a disgusting topic. Deworming medication can be used, in particular, I've heard Hikari makes a medication called Prazipro (based in praziquantal, a popular antiparasitic dewormer). However, I've never seen it on the shelves, and I don't believe that we stocked it the LFS I used to work for.

I'm more familiar with a FW intestinal worm by genus Camallanus. I talk about it on my disease page, www.fishpalace.org/Disease.html , under Intestinal Worms (under nematodes there). You can there follow a link on treatment of this parasite: http://inkmkr.com/Fish/CamallanusTreatment/ , which should be similar (in those cases, people had successfully used low doses of dog dewormer). DEFINITELY need to treat in QT, as most of these drugs will kill off a reef very quickly.

BTW, what are you feeding them that exposed them to this? Usually from live foods. The parasite needs an intermediate host.

PS: You might get some more specific input in the Disease Forum of RC, it just tends to take longer to get a reply there.

[AEreefer]

the only food that tank gets is hikari mysis(great food) seaweed selects algae for the tang and an occasional copeopod that gets thrown up in the main tank. my tang has always had a little bit of an indentation in his stomach although i fed him a lot of algae every day.. no matter what.

the thing that sickens me most is that when the tang crapped them out, all the other fish went and ate them. i was talking to my friend and he brought up the possibility that the tang could have aten a bunch of worms in the tank and didnt digest them too well. it looked kinda like cheato, just not curly and green. i literitally just took my whole tank down two weeks ago and did some major upgrading. too bad the fish didnt show signs then... ill post this in the disease forum... thanks for your help

[Pandora]

AE, you know, it may not have been worms at all. I don't know why I thought you said in your original post that they were moving... maybe it was just my overvivid imagination (and the sour stomach I already had). Because the thing is, sometimes tangs do get into chaeto and then this causes a GI blockage, some other guy was posting that his tang had some stuck to his rear end for about a week before he pooped it out. It doesn't sound like anything that you fed him would have been in that "danger" category (I was expecting you to say you fed raw fish you had caught, etc. or that this was a newly added tang). Might have worried us for nothing.