Fish with stange volcano shaped protrussions

[JaimeAdams]

This is my pet puffer. He and another fish in this fish only system have strange white volcano looking protrussions sticking out of their skin. This has been ongoing for several months. Things that I have tried; hyposalinity at 1.009, CP and Metro. At first I thought some form of fluke or anchor worm, but they would not have survived weeks of Hypo. It seens that they are poking through his skin layer almost like a bone protruding between 1/16 to 1/8th of an inch. The other fish affected is a Desjardini Sailfin Tang. The Emporer Angel, French Angel and Yellow Tang seem unaffected

 

[JaimeAdams]

Those pics were from a couple of months ago there are more on the puffer and a lot on the tang.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I’ve not seen this before. Puffers are prone to some odd copepod parasites, but I wouldn’t expect the same ones to affect a tang.

Have you tried a 5 minute freshwater dip?

I wonder - have you thought about trying to pull one off the puffer with tweezers?
Jay

 

[JaimeAdams]

I’ve not seen this before. Puffers are prone to some odd copepod parasites, but I wouldn’t expect the same ones to affect a tang.

Have you tried a 5 minute freshwater dip?

I wonder - have you thought about trying to pull one off the puffer with tweezers?
Jay

I have not tried a freshwater dip based off of them having been in 1.009 salinity fur several weeks. I figured that would kill any type of fluke or worm. I could try a dip though.

I have tried pulling one off and putting it under the microscope. Didn't see much. Possibly I should try another.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I have not tried a freshwater dip based off of them having been in 1.009 salinity fur several weeks. I figured that would kill any type of fluke or worm. I could try a dip though.

I have tried pulling one off and putting it under the microscope. Didn't see much. Possibly I should try another.

I think a FW dip would be worth a try on the puffer. 1.009 may not have been low enough. Still, this doesn’t look like any ectoparasite that I’ve ever seen before.
Jay

 

[JaimeAdams]

The tang and angel look horrible today. Here are a couple pics of them. Not the greatest pics, but can see the shape of the protrusions better. I dosed Metro and added more CP.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Some of those look like mucus plugs to me now, but I can't account for why there would be so many. A skin scrape on the puffer would prove useful, but you would need a microscope or some sort of magnifying device. Did the FW dip provide any relief?

Jay

 

[Fink]

Do you have any follow-up on this, were you able to figure out what was going on? I have never seen anything like this before and was super curious what ended up happening?

 

[JaimeAdams]

Do you have any follow-up on this, were you able to figure out what was going on? I have never seen anything like this before and was super curious what ended up happening?

You know. What I ended up doing was high levels chloroquine and Metronidazole.