Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
So I just had a flame angel go nuclear on me; still no idea what happened.
He got some popeye looking stuff in his left eye, but no appreciable loss of appetite or spots or anything. My fish have been a little annoyed over the last few days so I figured he just banged his eye on something when he was swimming. Worst case, he loses sight in it and swims funny.
It started to clear up a little bit, then I noticed one morning he just parked under a rock at the back of my tank. Still swimming, but not trying to come out. The next morning he went into a cave rock I have and just tried to stay up high in it. At that point, I'm figuring something is clearly amiss.
I set up my quarantine and was able to reach in and pull him out of the cave rock. I realize at that point that he's simply gone blind altogether. I put him in QT, drop some Clout in there (nastiest stuff you'll ever use) and give him a day. He seems to be feeling better in the tank, pecking along the bottom, etc... trying to find food even though he can't see. I grab a high-intensity LED and hit him with it and discovered that he's essentially hollowed out through his face. The eye sockets have 'eyes' still, but there's just nothing behind them. They've sunken in and he's starting to lose flesh along his body.
The next day, dead as a stone.
All told, it took about 1 week from start to finish. I have absolutely no clue what led to it or what it was. A lot of parasites are type-specific, so I'm hoping he just had some kind of angelfish funk that came in on the Coral Beauty I tried to add (died within a week).
I'll let it go with no Angel fishes for a month or so to try to let whatever is in there finish out its lifecycle. Then I'll try again and see how it goes.
Crazy; I've never seen anything like that before.
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Missing tissue like that sounds like lateral line erosion, which is usually caused by severe nutrient deficiencies. It usually shows up together with an infection (the infection is actually the cause - LLE is really a "symptom")...
Have you ever used Wonder Shells? They're great little mineral blocks that can help defend against these kinds of things...