Purple tang with fin rot and skin erosion

[hondo1721]

I got this guy from the fish store as a rescue. He acts super healthy and eats everything as fast as I put it in. He has some parts of his fins that seem to have died and erosion of his skin around the head. Is this fin rot and hlle? I’ve given a few doses of kanaplex, but have noticed any change in a couple of weeks since I got him. The fin looks strange since there is a definitive line of where it is dead and perfectly normal looking. Should I expect all of the dead looking part to wither away and then eventually regrow? What about the area around the eyes and head. I’m patient, but wanted to know what to expect and if I should be doing any specific treatments. It’s in quarantine with copper. Haven’t seen any signs of ich or flukes. Feeding lots of nori, PE mysis, and pellets.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I got this guy from the fish store as a rescue. He acts super healthy and eats everything as fast as I put it in. He has some parts of his fins that seem to have died and erosion of his skin around the head. Is this fin rot and hlle? I’ve given a few doses of kanaplex, but have noticed any change in a couple of weeks since I got him. The fin looks strange since there is a definitive line of where it is dead and perfectly normal looking. Should I expect all of the dead looking part to wither away and then eventually regrow? What about the area around the eyes and head. I’m patient, but wanted to know what to expect and if I should be doing any specific treatments. It’s in quarantine with copper. Haven’t seen any signs of ich or flukes. Feeding lots of nori, PE mysis, and pellets.

Unfortunately the fins will not change or restore and you can prevent further HLLE by providing water quality and diet with foods such as TDO pellets, LRS herbivore frenzy, nori, spirulina brine and mysis shrimp.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I got this guy from the fish store as a rescue. He acts super healthy and eats everything as fast as I put it in. He has some parts of his fins that seem to have died and erosion of his skin around the head. Is this fin rot and hlle? I’ve given a few doses of kanaplex, but have noticed any change in a couple of weeks since I got him. The fin looks strange since there is a definitive line of where it is dead and perfectly normal looking. Should I expect all of the dead looking part to wither away and then eventually regrow? What about the area around the eyes and head. I’m patient, but wanted to know what to expect and if I should be doing any specific treatments. It’s in quarantine with copper. Haven’t seen any signs of ich or flukes. Feeding lots of nori, PE mysis, and pellets.

This looks like severe HLLE to me. However, in some cases, really bad HLLE can lead to secondary bacterial infections. Did the fins look like this when you got it, or did the fin damage develop since then? If the former, I'd say this is just really bad HLLE. If so, avoid using dusty carbon, and feed the fish many times a day with the best foods possible (both algae based and meaty seafoods) and see if it improves over time (could be months though). If the fin damage seems to be worsening rapidly, that is more of a sign of secondary bacterial infection, and that would need to be treated with a gram negative, broad spectrum antibiotic such as neomycin or kanamycin, in a hospital tank.