Very Odd Marks on the Side of a Foxface Rabbitfish

[rkpetersen]

Got up 2 days ago and find that my Foxface Rabbitfish has a cluster of fairly sizable, irregular-surfaced, raised, white bumps on just one area of his right flank and adjacent anal fin. Behavior normal.

Pretty regularly spaced, and in just a small area on one side. Then I saw a small but very sticky haddoni carpet anemone was floating around the top of a rock, not attached to its usual spot. This is how it looks after I set it back down.

And then, which you can't really see well in those first few pix, there's a small but definite bite out of the back edge of the foxface's dorsal fin, not there the day before.

So, the way I put it together is: Not an infectious agent. The Foxface blundered or more likely fled (from a Purple Tang, most likely) into the small haddoni carpet. The Foxface got stuck and jerked away, pulled the carpet off its perch, and managed to get away from it entirely. These are welts, the result of stings.

Next day, yesterday: Looking significantly better. Each lesion is smaller with less inflammation around the base.

Second day, today: Almost healed up.

It probably would have been prudent to put this fish in a hospital tank as soon as I saw the lesions, but when I felt the chances were high that it was non-infectious, I chose to give the fish 24 hours and see if its condition worsened or improved in that time. Admittedly, secondary bacterial infection is always a concern.

 

[DSC reef]

Glad the fish is recovering nicely and quickly. When we were raising a banded cat shark it swam into a long tentacle of a RBTA and it completely wrapped around its fin to the point where I had to intervene. It was pretty scary but we were amazed at how quickly the shark healed. The anemone was gone the next day

 

[Katrina71]

Thanks for posting. It's cool to see what to look for. Glad he escaped.

 

[Big G]

Beautiful fish. Nice analysis.

 

[HotRocks]

It is quite amazing how fast a healthy fish can heal from something like this.

So much different than trying to nurse a sick fish back to health.

Thank you for sharing this! Sometimes I feel like a broken record... Move your fish to QT, bomb it with meds. As this is a great example of that not always being the case!

 

[rkpetersen]

It is quite amazing how fast a healthy fish can heal from something like this.

This is what has amazed me as well, many times. How fast fish can heal from injuries, if they're otherwise healthy, and don't sustain reinjury or secondary infection.