Snowflake blenny help

[Brian Kennedy]

I started TTM to rid my fish of ich before they go into the new 120 gallon DT. My blenny has been acting a bit lethargic lately but I thought it was due to the ich in my old DT. Just did my first transfer and he's got a red contusion on his head. He's in QT with two oscillaris clowns and two small chromis. Is this bacteria or something else?. I have a handful of various meds, but no copper.

 

[Sashaka]

I'm not sure what the red area is; however, it does look like infection. To rule out other causes, could any of your other fish have caused the damage? If the fish are in a small open tank with few hiding places, they will sometimes take their stress out on each other. I would recommend that you add more hiding places using PVC pipes in the outside chance the marks are due to bullying.

If you can, use a large plastic strainer (like the kind we use to drain foods) to do the transfers instead of a net to lesson the chance of injury caused by a fish racing around the tank and banging into things or a possible injury caused by netting the fish.

Finally, I would start the trifecta antibiotic treatment whether the redness is caused by injury or an active infection. If it's an injury, you'll want to prevent infection from taking hold. If it's an active infection, you'll want to start treatment right away. Stress can compromise the fish's immune system, so be careful that the fish bioload in the tanks is not causing ammonia spiking.

Continue TTM as scheduled to take care of the ich problem and redose each new tank with appropriately antibiotics to keep the antibiotics at medicinal levels the for the full 10 day treatment. At least this is what I would do.

BTW, I believe that's a starry blenny (Salarias ramosus), though snowflake maybe an alternate name for this fish; I'm not sure.

Good luck. I hope the fish makes a complete recovery!

 

[vetteguy53081]

Looks like skin infection or reaction to treatment. Neomyacin or even melafix May help but see how it looks the next 12hrs for stability ir worsening before treatment