Orange Lined Fairy Wrasse bubble under scales?

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Update: Hard to get a good pic with the cloudy water, but he continues to improve, the eye appears almost entirely healed now, and he is acting pretty normal, still eating like a horse. Hopefully the improvements continue and his recovery is complete! Thank you all so much for your assistance and continued advice through this.

Tyler

This is a weird case in many respects - the moving spot and now the timing is odd. Going from what the eye looked like on Monday to today is so fast of an improvement that I can’t explain it. Antibiotics typically take 3-5 days to work.
Still, we’ll take what we can get, right?
Once the tank clears and the fish seems stable you’ll want to treat with prazipro 3x, 8 days apart in case that thing was a Neobenedenia fluke. Or you can run hyposalinity for 35 days at 1.0125 specific gravity.
Jay

 

[Tyler N]

This is a weird case in many respects - the moving spot and now the timing is odd. Going from what the eye looked like on Monday to today is so fast of an improvement that I can’t explain it. Antibiotics typically take 3-5 days to work.
Still, we’ll take what we can get, right?
Once the tank clears and the fish seems stable you’ll want to treat with prazipro 3x, 8 days apart in case that thing was a Neobenedenia fluke. Or you can run hyposalinity for 35 days at 1.0125 specific gravity.
Jay

Apologies again for the terrible picture, but the camera refuses to focus on the glass. I have an abundance of copopods (which I understand to be a good thing) but also now have a lot of these tiny little string-like creatures on the glass. Could these be parasitic/contributing to the illness? Or are they simply detritus worms or something like that.

I will definitely treat the prazipro once the tank clears again and he seems good, before adding him into the display tank.

Tyler

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Apologies again for the terrible picture, but the camera refuses to focus on the glass. I have an abundance of copopods (which I understand to be a good thing) but also now have a lot of these tiny little string-like creatures on the glass. Could these be parasitic/contributing to the illness? Or are they simply detritus worms or something like that.

I will definitely treat the prazipro once the tank clears again and he seems good, before adding him into the display tank.

Tyler

Virtually 100% of the time, if you see worms on the glass, they are not fish parasites . They can be a symptom of too much leftover foods though. That can also cause cloudy water so you should look into that as a possible issue.
Jay

 

[Tyler N]

Final Update: After making what appeared to be a complete recovery; eyes cleared up, behavior normal, full appetite and energetic swimming, I woke up this morning to find my Wrasse dead on the bottom of my tank. Attaching a picture here just in case someone can see and identify what possibly killed him. Today would have been Day 5 (the final day) of the Maracyn. Those white spots and the red around the eyes were not present last night when I fed him.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Sorry to hear. If you haven’t disposed of the fish yet, you can sometimes do a post Mortem FW dip to look for Neobenedenia. It needs to be done within an hour or so of death.
I don’t think you’ll find any, but it pays to do all the diagnostics that you can.
Jay