Possible infection?

[MaMe]

Hi. I’m still new at this so please excuse my blunders in advance! [emoji5]

I am worried my fish might be getting sick. A few days ago I noticed my lawnmower blenny and my yellow head sleeper gobby kept divebombing the sand and scraping their gills against it (flashing?). The gobby has still been sifting sand as well as eating mysis and brine shrimp out of the water. The blenny also seems to still pick at food (algae in the tank and seaweed from the fish store) but is getting skinny, though this has been going on for 2 weeks. Within the next day or 2, my 6 line wrasse got a “fat lip” where it’s upper lip seems to have a big bump on it. But it still eats and hunts off the live rock everyday.

I’ve been watching the tank closely because of this. Today I noticed one white dot on a chromis tail fin and maybe 2 on my wrasse’s pelvic fin. Also, my maroon clown has a little bit of white near it’s mouth that I don’t remember seeing before.

Are my fish getting ich or some other infection/parasite? Or am I just watching too close? If it’s something, I don’t want to wait until they are half dead to treat, but if it’s nothing, I don’t want to treat them and stress them out unnecessarily.

Tank parameters- 32 gal biocube. 20-25 lbs live rock. Arogonite sand (anywhere from 1-5 inches depending on where the goby has been dogging ‍). Temp-79 Ammonia-0 Nitrite-0 Nitrate-0 Phosphate-less than .25 Alkalinity 300 ppm PH 7.8 (won’t go up for anything!)

Tank residents- (2) chromis, (1) maroon clown, (1) 6 line wrasse, (1) lawnmower blenny, (1) yellow head sleeper goby, (1) coral banded shrimp, (1) peppermint shrimp, (2) Mexican turbo snails, (2) nassarius snails, (4) asters snails

 

[mcarroll]

Tank residents- (2) chromis, (1) maroon clown, (1) 6 line wrasse, (1) lawnmower blenny, (1) yellow head sleeper goby, (1) coral banded shrimp, (1) peppermint shrimp, (2) Mexican turbo snails, (2) nassarius snails, (4) asters snails

That seems like quite a bit for such a small tank....especially if it's a pretty new tank....double-especially if you're a pretty new reefer.

If you're doing anything to push your tank toward your "zero nutrients" condition, stop....that means no carbon dosing or GFO or anything like that.

What and how often are you feeding your fish?

The flashing behavior is not awesome to have happening, but your fish don't look too bad from the photo's you posted.

Consider getting a Marineland Polishing Filter (micron filter/diatom filter) to run until you get this sorted out. If there's anything trying to bloom, that'll keep the numbers down....perhaps even under control. For the time being I'd clean it daily/as possible.

Do you have a microscope to look through if you were able to get a sample of one of those "growths"? If not, I have a thread to get you started Selecting a microscope.

2¢

 

[Humblefish]

Of the symptoms you’ve described, scratching the gills and the blenny getting skinny is what’s most concerning.

Have you ever seen any stringy white feces coming out of the blenny?

 

[MaMe]

That seems like quite a bit for such a small tank....especially if it's a pretty new tank....double-especially if you're a pretty new reefer.

If you're doing anything to push your tank toward your "zero nutrients" condition, stop....that means no carbon dosing or GFO or anything like that.

What and how often are you feeding your fish?

The flashing behavior is not awesome to have happening, but your fish don't look too bad from the photo's you posted.

Consider getting a Marineland Polishing Filter (micron filter/diatom filter) to run until you get this sorted out. If there's anything trying to bloom, that'll keep the numbers down....perhaps even under control. For the time being I'd clean it daily/as possible.

Do you have a microscope to look through if you were able to get a sample of one of those "growths"? If not, I have a thread to get you started Selecting a microscope.

2¢

Yikes! Is it? We were told 1 inch of fish per gal of water.

The only thing we are using is the stock filter which has carbon in it. We rinse it daily. We also added some ceramic rings in a bag under that.

Once a day we feed half a cube of either frozen mysis or frozen brine shrimp. Then we add a pinch of ocean nutrition prime reef flakes. The fish eat it all and are always looking for more. We also have formula 1 sinking mini pellets but we don’t often use them.

I do have a microscope that might work, but how would I collect the growth?

Thanks for the help!

 

[MaMe]

Of the symptoms you’ve described, scratching the gills and the blenny getting skinny is what’s most concerning.

Have you ever seen any stringy white feces coming out of the blenny?

No just green poop for the lawnmower blenny. It looks like other fish poo but green. But we give it a small piece of seaweed on a clip every other day since I noticed it getting skinnier (sometimes everyday) so that probably explains the color.

When we first got it, it picked off the rocks and snail shells but after 3 weeks or so it stopped and just let the algae grow.

It doesn’t constantly rub on the sand. Only once in awhile. But it never did that at the beginning. (I’ve had it for about 5 weeks.)

 

[mcarroll]

Yikes! Is it? We were told 1 inch of fish per gal of water.

That's an okay rule of thumb – they just forgot to include "eventually".

(Seems like they (hopefully) mentioned that the rule only applies to the adult size of the fish. )

The only thing we are using is the stock filter which has carbon in it. We rinse it daily. We also added some ceramic rings in a bag under that.

That's a fine setup for now, but you can stop the daily rinsing, at least for the carbon.

The ceramic rings should be unneeded if you have a normal amount of live rock in the tank.

Once a day we feed half a cube of either frozen mysis or frozen brine shrimp. Then we add a pinch of ocean nutrition prime reef flakes. The fish eat it all and are always looking for more. We also have formula 1 sinking mini pellets but we don’t often use them.

Sounds like a good feeding routine – the problem isn't here, it's with the number of fish and the maturity of the tank.

I do have a microscope that might work, but how would I collect the growth?

Excellent! There are lots of resources where you can get the details, including some posts by @Paul B and some others around here, but many, many vids on youtube and even whole websites dedicated to it if you google around a bit. But in a nutshell...

1. catch the fish
2. knock him out
3. scrape or grab a little sample with tweezer/forceps
4. revive your buddy in some fresh tank water
5. send him back home
6. you've got your sample

If you run a search with some good terms on R2R and you include Paul's username you should be able to find some good reading.

"fish autopsy" "fish scale sample" and "fish necropsy" are some good terms to use for search to get lots of techniques. Obviously you want your fish alive, so you won't be following these many of these guides verbatim.

When we first got it, it picked off the rocks and snail shells but after 3 weeks or so it stopped and just let the algae grow.

It's not impossible that there's something sinister going on since you noticed some weithloss. But it's also fairly likely that he's just been adapting to tank food – or trying and failing.

Here's a relevant quote from another thread:

My algae blenny ate hair algae like there was no tomorrow. He was fat as long as I had gha in the tank! The problem with him was he ate all the algae out of the tank and then starved to death because he would not eat anything else I gave him.
My starry blenny didn't like the algae blenny but there was enough room that they could stay away from each other. Starry wont touch the gha but does nip at the rocks and will eat norri!

Fish and snails are both like us in their ability to be picky about food....in tests, they have prefered processed/prepared foods, to whole meaty foods, which were preferred to their normal algae, which were preferred to an "unpalatable" algae.

They'll choose a bag of snacks over their salad every time and "kale" is the worst!

 

[MaMe]

Thanks for you help! I don’t see any of the white dots on the fins today and the fish aren’t flashing today. Hopefully that’s good. But if they come back I’ll get a sample. I’ll also see if I can pick up that filter.

The wrasse still has a fat lip but I read it can be from trauma when they try to grab a tasty treat out of the LR. Hopefully it will go down soon.

As for the blenny, he has started eating some flakes which is weird because I though it was strictly an herbivore.

Here is a pic of the blenny.