Giant lesions in fish within 48 hours. Uronema?

[payrawsa]

I have this fish with a few others in quarantine. I believe it's uronema. Do I euthanize the fish? Other fish look fine should I continue treatment and then do a formaline bath before entering into main display?

 

[Sharkbait19]

#fishmedic
The lesions don’t really look like uro to me - seems more like a bacterial infection.

 

[payrawsa]

Should add I started using erethromycin yesterday. They have also gone through one round of general cure and the next round will be tomorrow for flukes which they had.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

Advanced Uronema infections often have a bacterial component. Given the species of fish and the look of the lesions, I’d say that is it.

I would not move any fish from this tank to a display right now. Given that this fish is laying on its side, you likely won’t be able to save it, but if you post your quaratine protocol to date, plus information about your quarantine tank, I can try to develop a plan going forward.
Jay

 

[payrawsa]

Welcome to Teef2Reef!

Advanced Uronema infections often have a bacterial component. Given the species of fish and the look of the lesions, I’d say that is it.

I would not love any fish from this tank to a display right now. Given that this fish is laying on its side, you likely won’t be able to save it, but if you post your quaratine protocol to date, plus information about your quarantine tank, I can try to develop a plan going forward.
Jay

QT is cycled. I have an ammo alert badge that I monitor. Water changes consist of my main tank water going into these quarantine tanks which is more established (copepods algea etc). I have a hob filter and wavemakers for the qt tanks that I use. I have 2x20 long tanks. One has a yellow flagfin angel and 2 clowns. The other had this fish, 2 pintail wrasses and 5 clowns. I treated for flukes and will be using a second round of general cure (5 days since first) tomorrow. I started erethromycin again in both tanks. Slowly ramping up copper in both tanks. The tank with the 2 wrasses I'm ramping up over 4 days the other tank in 2 days. The flagfin also had lesions initially but I freshwater dipped him and saw the flukes fall off then I used erethromycin and general cure. He's doing better now (lesions gone/healing) but still not eating. Maybe he'll eat today. This quarantine business is so stressful.

 

[payrawsa]

Also thank you for the welcome. Happy to be part of this community

 

[vetteguy53081]

QT is cycled. I have an ammo alert badge that I monitor. Water changes consist of my main tank water going into these quarantine tanks which is more established (copepods algea etc). I have a hob filter and wavemakers for the qt tanks that I use. I have 2x20 long tanks. One has a yellow flagfin angel and 2 clowns. The other had this fish, 2 pintail wrasses and 5 clowns. I treated for flukes and will be using a second round of general cure (5 days since first) tomorrow. I started erethromycin again in both tanks. Slowly ramping up copper in both tanks. The tank with the 2 wrasses I'm ramping up over 4 days the other tank in 2 days. The flagfin also had lesions initially but I freshwater dipped him and saw the flukes fall off then I used erethromycin and general cure. He's doing better now (lesions gone/healing) but still not eating. Maybe he'll eat today. This quarantine business is so stressful.

There is a lot of different treatments in play here and I agree with Jay on bacterial and Uronema and firstly would NOT use tank water for quarantine tanks especially with now a bacterial issue as QT is in essence now also infected. Treatment would be either Saechem Kanaplex or Maracyn 2 . You really cant see flukes fall off but you really need a restart.
Change out the tank water in the QT tanks and use nothing from display. for uronema, you will want to get Quick Cure. If none, then Ruby rally Pro. The the chloroquine you mentioned.
Best treatment choice is a 45 min formalin bath using Quick Cure then finished in a quarantine tank. Once in QT tank, treat and assure that the parasites have been eliminated. You can also soak food in metronidazole . . . Seachem Metroplex for 10-14 days but fish is moribund which is like a comatose state and will not survivem so focus on bacterial

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Also thank you for the welcome. Happy to be part of this community

Taking more than 24 hours to ramp up coppersafe or copper power is always risky. That is old advice from the days where most people used ionic copper. Fish can die from disease if you take too long as copper does not work until you hit a full dose.
Jay

 

[Weeb]

A rather more sad approach. . .Euthanize the fish. Totally clean out the QT and its entire system (filtration, etc.) and start again. Be sure to 'sterilize' even nets and ancillary equipment you have used (e.g., with bleach). Uronema marinum is a terrible protozoan. It doesn't need a fish to live. If this in any way gets to the DT, it will never be eradicated.

Treat any exposed fish to this fish and put into a new or the newly cleaned QT.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

A rather more sad approach. . .Euthanize the fish. Totally clean out the QT and its entire system (filtration, etc.) and start again. Be sure to 'sterilize' even nets and ancillary equipment you have used (e.g., with bleach). Uronema marinum is a terrible protozoan. It doesn't need a fish to live. If this in any way gets to the DT, it will never be eradicated.

Treat any exposed fish to this fish and put into a new or the newly cleaned QT.

I agree this fish is going to need to be euthanized, if it isn't dead already.

So here is a story: when I started doing necropsies at the Shedd back on the 80's, I was getting about 25% of my diagnoses as "Uronema". My curator at the time just smiled and told me to ignore that, I was seeing post-mortem artifacts. I disagreed, and continued to log "Uronema deaths", He finally had me tie a dead smelt in a tank for a few hours. Sure enough, it had the same "Uronema". He then explained that "Uronema" is a group of Scuticociliates that are free living, and normally feed on bacteria....

We never saw the terrible inter-cellular form show up in anything other than newly acquired fish, and I still haven't seen that happen. My estimate is that 80% of established aquariums have Uronema, although I was told that Aquabiomics says the percentage is more like 25%

I don't follow the idea of sterilizing a tank just because fish with internal Uronema died in it, it will likely be present later on anyway. Better control is to avoid susceptible fish, or buy pre-quarantined fish (so that the initial loss is on the dealer).

Jay

p.s. - the running gag is this clip from Repo Man. I'm Miller and the air freshener is Uronema or Mycobacteria:

 

[payrawsa]

I agree this fish is going to need to be euthanized, if it isn't dead already.

So here is a story: when I started doing necropsies at the Shedd back on the 80's, I was getting about 25% of my diagnoses as "Uronema". My curator at the time just smiled and told me to ignore that, I was seeing post-mortem artifacts. I disagreed, and continued to log "Uronema deaths", He finally had me tie a dead smelt in a tank for a few hours. Sure enough, it had the same "Uronema". He then explained that "Uronema" is a group of Scuticociliates that are free living, and normally feed on bacteria....

We never saw the terrible inter-cellular form show up in anything other than newly acquired fish, and I still haven't seen that happen. My estimate is that 80% of established aquariums have Uronema, although I was told that Aquabiomics says the percentage is more like 25%

I don't follow the idea of sterilizing a tank just because fish with internal Uronema died in it, it will likely be present later on anyway. Better control is to avoid susceptible fish, or buy pre-quarantined fish (so that the initial loss is on the dealer).

Jay

p.s. - the running gag is this clip from Repo Man. I'm Miller and the air freshener is Uronema or Mycobacteria:

Do you recommend I start a new quarantine? All my fish that are being quarantined at the moment have been exposed to the fish that unfortunately died of uronema. The copper is at therapeutic levels (as you recommended I didn't ramp up the dosage). I was going to leave them in the copper until 2 more weeks and then give them a formalin bath and put the fish in a separate cycled sterilize qt tank for 2 weeks observation. Let me know if that's a good plan or not.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Do you recommend I start a new quarantine? All my fish that are being quarantined at the moment have been exposed to the fish that unfortunately died of uronema. The copper is at therapeutic levels (as you recommended I didn't ramp up the dosage). I was going to leave them in the copper until 2 more weeks and then give them a formalin bath and put the fish in a separate cycled sterilize qt tank for 2 weeks observation. Let me know if that's a good plan or not.

What fish are in this group? I worry that some others may break with Uronema if they are prone to carrying it.

Is the water testing good?

I’d run the copper two more weeks but instead of 2 weeks observation, I’d spend that time going through two prazi treatments (or general cure).

Jay

 

[payrawsa]

What fish are in this group? I worry that some others may break with Uronema if they are prone to carrying it.

Is the water testing good?

I’d run the copper two more weeks but instead of 2 weeks observation, I’d spend that time going through two prazi treatments (or general cure).

Jay

Yellow flagfin angelfish. I believe he had uronema but has healed now because he had similar lesions and fin rot. Fins are starting to come back and the lesions closed and the scales are healing. He's also starting to swim more. Then I have clownfish and 2 pintail wrasses.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Yellow flagfin angelfish. I believe he had uronema but has healed now because he had similar lesions and fin rot. Fins are starting to come back and the lesions closed and the scales are healing. He's also starting to swim more. Then I have clownfish and 2 pintail wrasses.

I saw a yellow fish in your picture, but thought it was a tang.
Uronema typically doesn’t heal, even with treatment, so maybe something else is going on?
Jay

 

[Weeb]

I saw a yellow fish in your picture, but thought it was a tang.
Uronema typically doesn’t heal, even with treatment, so maybe something else is going on?
Jay

Good catch about the 'healing.' Sounds like (at least) the healed fish had something else.