Surgeonfishes disease ID

[Marie-France]

Hello, we are dealing with a disease that so far attacked only surgeonfishes. It kills very quickly... What we see is that the fish is less active, doesn't eat. A brown patch appears on the skin of the fish, and spreads. The skin of the brown patch peels, but the brown patch stays. Then the fish quickly loose weight (I think looses water because of its broken osmotic barrier) and die. All of that happens in a couple of hours only. In all the process the fish never seems to have respiratory distress.

We lost three surgeonfishes, an orange shoulder, a tomini and a sailfin. Then a sohal showed the first signs. When the patch appeared (one hour ago) we dip it in formalin for 10 minutes. Now it is much better, much more active. The flashy blue highlights of the fins had come back.

Anybody has an idea?

[kar93]

Is it anythng like this, if it is then its lateral line disease.

[Marie-France]

No, it is not HLLE, as I said it kills in a couple of hours. When the orange shoulder died the brown patch was spreaded on 75% of the superficy of one of its side.

[mhurley]

Marie,

I'm going to move this thread into our Fish Diseases forum as I expect it will get some better attention in here rather than our general forums.

Good luck.

Regards,

[ArgonDreams]

I am likely way out on a limb here, but given that there is no respiratory distress it rules ou the obvious Velvet (Amyloodinium) infection. The only other infection that I know of that produces similar effects to what you are describing is Vibrio. However it's not species specific.

Here is a generalization of Vibrio:

A rapidly progressing septicaemic infection characterized by skin hemorrhages, lethargy, anorexia and the eventual formation of deep skin and muscle ulceration.

It may not be Vibrio, but you might want to go down that route and at least check it out.