Is this Velvet?

[TrishK]

We’ve had our Sailfin tang for quite some time and recently purchased our first coral frags. Stupid, stupid, stupid and being 6 months new to the hobby we didn’t realize we had to quarantine them as well so we put them right in. A few days later our Sailfin looked like this. We removed him immediately, did a freshwater dip and copper bath aNd into quarantine but I’m afraid it was too late and he died had found out hubby wasn’t zeroing out the salinity meter and the salinity was low as well as calcium and alkalinity according to our fish guy. I’m sure this is why we also lost two clowns, Madarin and cardinal fish. None of them looked like this though. Is it Velvet? We have a rather large yellow tang and yellow watchman goby and we have quarantine them after a FW dip. They aren’t showing signs at all of being sick but I have more copper ordered and will treat the nearly cleaned QT tank. If this is velvet is there any sense in treating the DT with kick ich or rally or just let it set fallow for 6 weeks? We have the frags, peppermint shrimp, herMIT crabs, cleanup snails and 2 BT anemones.

 

[Terri Caton]

What was your salinity?

Don’t beat yourself up. Almost no one in the hobby QTs their coral. Coral dip, yes.

Sorry this is happening to you.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Hard to tell post mortem. Could have been ich or velvet, do to the damage.

I would let the DT go fallow at this point for 76 days while the other fish go to QT. If no other fish are showing signs at this point, just observe but have the meds on hand to treat.

@HotRocks

 

[TrishK]

1.019-1.025 ...1.025 is where we usually keep it. We didn’t have meters to check the calcium and alkalinity but they were only a little low. We bought supplements and our corals enjoyed that.

 

[TrishK]

Hard to tell post mortem. Could have been ich or velvet, do to the damage.

I would let the DT go fallow at this point for 76 days while the other fish go to QT. If no other fish are showing signs at this point, just observe but have the meds on hand to treat.

@HotRocks

It’s strange because I saw him 24 hours before and he had nothing on him at all so
It happened really fast. He seemed to be hiding more than normal the day before we noticed all the gunk on him when usually he happily follows the yellow tang everywhere.

 

[TrishK]

It’s strange because I saw him 24 hours before and he had nothing on him at all so
It happened really fast. He seemed to be hiding more than normal the day before we noticed all the hunk on him when usually he happily follows the yellow tang everywhere.

He was still alive in the picture

 

[HotRocks]

How are your other fish doing?

It does sound like velvet based on how quickly things declined. The salinity shouldn’t have had any impact on the fish.

 

[Big G]

Sorry for your losses Looks like time for copper for all of your fish. Sometimes the parasites seem to come in waves as new generations hatch.

 

[TrishK]

Well it’s strange because we have a Domino, 3 yellow tailed damsels, yellow watchman goby, large yellow tang and a black molly and they are fine and have been ever since we got the coral frags which was Nov 18th. Could this Tang just became stressed out from the quality of the water? It looks like velvet to me too but I don’t understand why none of the other fish have been effected. They can’t all be immune

 

[TrishK]

Sorry for your losses Looks like time for copper for all of your fish. Sometimes the parasites seem to come in waves as new generations hatch.

should I copper them all in the quarantine tank even though they have never showed signs of being sick? To be honest we have kept the domino and three damsels in the filteration system tank because we don’t know what to do with them. They have gotten very aggressive with our other fish so we removed them from DT 2 weeks ago until we know what to do with them. My fish guy doesn’t want them Should I treat DT with rally and kick ich or just leave it fallow?