Hi everyone. I'd appreciate some help figuring out what is going on with 2 of my fish in my 500G fish only tank. Pictures are below but they are two of about 40 fish of varying sizes and types, the only two showing this kind of damage. One is a blue cheek butterfly the other a flagfin angel. They are larger than most fish in the tank but there are a handful that are bigger including a few tangs (yellow, scopas, purple, sailfin, regal, naso, vlamingi, dussumerei) and some angels (koran, blue cheek, maculous). I mention this because I'm wondering if it's aggression and potential infection rather than any parasite. I do see a lot of food competition and some fighting amongst the tangs but not anything significant involving these two. The other thing I think it might be is flukes, although the pictures in the stickies don't look as bad as this.
I have had issues with the tank before, significant fish loss due to either severe ich or velvet (couldn't properly diagnose, feedback on this forum was mixed), which I treated with longer than necessary periods of both hyposalinity and coppersafe, the former because I didn't have enough of the latter available when disease first set in. I have added fish since these treatments but I'm careful to quarantine everything now with coppersafe. I've never treated for flukes which is why I think it might the culprit.
The other important thing to add is that about 3 weeks ago I noticed some of the same symptoms that cause my earlier crash, lost 3 small butterflies with a number of others starting to quickly decline. This time around I acted quickly, dosed prazipro (only one full strength dose), dropped the salinity over 3 days to 1.012 and started dosing coppersafe. I know now it was risky to do all these at once but I panicked. Thankfully my fish recovered and I've not lost anything since then. I didn't dose more prazipro and slowly raised the salinity to it;s current level of about 1.016 but continued to raise copper where it now sits at the therapeutic level of 2.2-2.3. I did this because after the initial response I wanted to reduce fish stress by focusing on one treatment not three, and because I am most worried about ich or velvet given how quickly those can kill.
I think that's all that's relevant but please let me know if more is needed. Thanks in advance for your help. We are all attached to our fish but I've invested a lot in this tank since my crash and I don't think I could handle another one.
I have had issues with the tank before, significant fish loss due to either severe ich or velvet (couldn't properly diagnose, feedback on this forum was mixed), which I treated with longer than necessary periods of both hyposalinity and coppersafe, the former because I didn't have enough of the latter available when disease first set in. I have added fish since these treatments but I'm careful to quarantine everything now with coppersafe. I've never treated for flukes which is why I think it might the culprit.
The other important thing to add is that about 3 weeks ago I noticed some of the same symptoms that cause my earlier crash, lost 3 small butterflies with a number of others starting to quickly decline. This time around I acted quickly, dosed prazipro (only one full strength dose), dropped the salinity over 3 days to 1.012 and started dosing coppersafe. I know now it was risky to do all these at once but I panicked. Thankfully my fish recovered and I've not lost anything since then. I didn't dose more prazipro and slowly raised the salinity to it;s current level of about 1.016 but continued to raise copper where it now sits at the therapeutic level of 2.2-2.3. I did this because after the initial response I wanted to reduce fish stress by focusing on one treatment not three, and because I am most worried about ich or velvet given how quickly those can kill.
I think that's all that's relevant but please let me know if more is needed. Thanks in advance for your help. We are all attached to our fish but I've invested a lot in this tank since my crash and I don't think I could handle another one.
