Hello All,
Our firefish was fine last evening. She/he was eating normally and doing her usual routine. Generally she hangs around the front of the tank, hovering and periodically eating copepods or whatever. She also swims under the rocks and corals.
Today we found her in a corner of the tank she rarely visits looking at pictured below.
She lives in a 125 gallon system that's been running since October, and was an upgrade from a mature 90 gallon system. We had an outbreak of marine velvet when the upgrade was installed and left the system fallow for 2 months.
We had one powder blue tang get velvet in the period since December - but it was a new addition. We quarantined it for a month but maybe that wasn't long enough. It died in February I think.
We haven't had any issues with our remaining fish until our sand sifting goby died a few weeks ago. The goby had a previous encounter with a large bristle worm (we could see the spines sticking out of his mouth and body) and he nearly died but recovered in quarantine. It seemed like the goby had another encounter with a large bristle worm (the worms and the gobies seem to occupy the same caves under the rocks) and, like this firefish, was acting listless suddenly and we could see spines sticking out of his body. We weren't able to capture him to remove him, he kept going under the rocks. He wasn't interested in food so we couldn't trap him. The next day we found his corpse covered with bristle worm spines. He had not acted sick at all.
We were worried about the firefish because she goes into the same caves. We (perhaps this was a mistake) got a coral banded shrimp at the recommendation of our LFS. This shrimp has expressed zero interest in our killer worms. We did see it raise it's Pinchers to the fish but they seem much faster than the shrimp.
Currently we've done a fresh water dip to see if any of the white spots would fall off the fire fish but they did not. She is currently in a cycled quarantine tank. We do have live rock in there we can remove if copper is necessary but prefer not to stress sick fish with ammonia if we can avoid it.
What does this look like? Is this a parasite or is this bristle worm damage?
SG 1.025
Nitrates 32 (our system hovers between 20 - 32, there is a person in the house that likes fat fish).
Our firefish was fine last evening. She/he was eating normally and doing her usual routine. Generally she hangs around the front of the tank, hovering and periodically eating copepods or whatever. She also swims under the rocks and corals.
Today we found her in a corner of the tank she rarely visits looking at pictured below.
She lives in a 125 gallon system that's been running since October, and was an upgrade from a mature 90 gallon system. We had an outbreak of marine velvet when the upgrade was installed and left the system fallow for 2 months.
We had one powder blue tang get velvet in the period since December - but it was a new addition. We quarantined it for a month but maybe that wasn't long enough. It died in February I think.
We haven't had any issues with our remaining fish until our sand sifting goby died a few weeks ago. The goby had a previous encounter with a large bristle worm (we could see the spines sticking out of his mouth and body) and he nearly died but recovered in quarantine. It seemed like the goby had another encounter with a large bristle worm (the worms and the gobies seem to occupy the same caves under the rocks) and, like this firefish, was acting listless suddenly and we could see spines sticking out of his body. We weren't able to capture him to remove him, he kept going under the rocks. He wasn't interested in food so we couldn't trap him. The next day we found his corpse covered with bristle worm spines. He had not acted sick at all.
We were worried about the firefish because she goes into the same caves. We (perhaps this was a mistake) got a coral banded shrimp at the recommendation of our LFS. This shrimp has expressed zero interest in our killer worms. We did see it raise it's Pinchers to the fish but they seem much faster than the shrimp.
Currently we've done a fresh water dip to see if any of the white spots would fall off the fire fish but they did not. She is currently in a cycled quarantine tank. We do have live rock in there we can remove if copper is necessary but prefer not to stress sick fish with ammonia if we can avoid it.
What does this look like? Is this a parasite or is this bristle worm damage?
SG 1.025
Nitrates 32 (our system hovers between 20 - 32, there is a person in the house that likes fat fish).
