Ostracion cubicus disease

[nicky11]

Hey everyone, haven't been around for a while. After losing all my fish a while back ago to ich, I decided to leave the tank running with no fish for about 4 months to get rid of any parasite. And now I finally decided to get back to having fish, and last friday I bought a juvenile Ostracion cubicus. He was extremely lively and would pick at the rock and was in great condition, but when I got him home the first couple days he was fine and since last night, he developed something on his fin. In my opinion it could be an aiptasia sting, as there is a lot of this in my tank, but I would like to hear some opinions.

My water parameters are absolutely fine, just a small amount of nitrate, density is 1.025. pH is at about 8.1. And I refuse to believe this could be ich or some parasite or fungus, because I've had a pair of clowns in there for about 2 weeks already and they are fine. All my inverts have been in perfect condition during the 4 months with no fish. And when I aclimated the boxfish I was super careful to very slowly match the params in the bag to the ones in the tank.

So any ideas would help a lot. Thanks.

 

[Kevin8888]

Nice, a boxfish, love those guys... but will never have them due to them nuking the tank if they die. ANYWAYS...

Looks like Lymphocyctis virus, causes cells to grow out of control in white masses
like this guy.

Should clear up on its own... but there is also a possibility of it being a fungus, or a burn like you said.

 

[nicky11]

Excellent Kevin, this is most probably the case. From reading a bit on the virus I'm conviced it has to be this. Like I say I couldn't imagine it being a parasite or even some other type of disease, as my other fish are fine. Unfortunately this one must have already come with the virus, but hopefully it should be fine soon. He's eating very well, but keeps hidden most of the time for now, but I'm sure he should be up and about soon enough.

Thanks a lot for the id.

 

[Kevin8888]

Glad I could help, I try to keep up with the disease IDs since no one else does (though i try to avoid Ich ones as everyone and their uncle replies to those lol).

 

[nicky11]

I think thats awesome, you were spot on here. The white flesh on the fin has already started to break off, its just dangling by a little piece that sooner or later will break off. Im just trying to be around as much to hopefully be able to take it out of the tank as soon as it comes off. But I've noticed a big change in its behavior, the little guy is back to being lively and nipping at the rock. Again thanks a lot for the help, I appreciate it.

 

[Kevin8888]

Again, I'm Glad I could help.

 

[nicky11]

Hey Kevin, if you're around, so my boxfish lost the little piece of skin that was on its fin and had been acting perfectly fine the last few days. I've been feeding live artemia and he has been quite happy chasing them around the tank. Even today I fed him and he seemed fine, and now all of a sudden I wen outside and his mouth was a little hurt and from one minute to another just froze and stopped breathing. So I took him out of the tank before any toxin was released.

I have quite a lot of aiptasia in the tank (over here in Peru we get live rock with it and no ways to control it, not even peppermint shrimp), so my question is, is there a chance that it got stung various times and perished because of that? Cause I cant think of any other reason, my water params are perfect, my two clownfish, boxer shrimp, hermit crab are all fine. So any ideas of what could have happened?

 

[Kevin8888]

I wish I could give you an idea... but I'm honnestly not sure, I would have to disect the fish to check for parasites, and other things... there are just to many things that can cause fish to die suddendly... its possible that aiptasia was the culpret... or it could somehow be related to the fin issue... I suppose its also possible he hit something really hard (resulting in the mouth damage you saw) which could have done some internal damage, but again I really cant say. If you notice any other fish having problems be sure to post it and maybe something will show its self. Sorry I cant be of more help.