HELP PLEASE!!!! SICK ANGEL

[pacific blue]

I have a coral beauty that has (what i think, from internet reasearch, is lateral line erosion) behind his eye sockets has begun to erode, but not on his lateral line. Aparantly this disease can occur in angels and tangs? but none of the tangs in the same tank have got it. Any help and advice would be very much appreciated!

[wasp]

Noone quite knows exactly what causes this disease but it is often associated with poor water quality, more so in the old days when undergravel filters or cannister filters were used.

Cannot suggest an infallible cure, but 2 things will help, if nitrates are high do whatever it takes to get them down, and having done that try dosing a product called Reef Solution, it has been noticed over quite a few years that lateral line disease is virtually unknown in tanks using the miracle mud system and cures are often brought about by converting to miracle mud. Reef Solution is the basic ingredients of miracle mud without having to convert to the whole system.

[tHEcONCH]

Feed it some high quality food + vitamins.

[puttputt]

Also read a few times that stray currents may cause it, do you use a grounding probe.

[pacific blue]

Thanks. Do you mean electrical currents? And my tank does use canisters. :oops: two bigish ones. weve never had any problems until now. the fish get feed flakes (both vegitarian and marine) in the morning, and frozen brine and bloodworm at night, is this healthy enough?

[tHEcONCH]

As far as the canisters go, if they are external they shouldn't be a problem - all your fish would be darting if there were a serious stray electrical current issue. Its more likely that you need to use sort of Vitamin supplement, especially given that one of your fish appears to have a condition associated with a lack of them - try adding something like Reef Plus to the shrimp, or better still Reef Solutions.

[wasp]

Personally i wouldn't go so far to say external cannisters are not a problem, they can be a pretty major problem but some people will get away with it if the rest of the system can cope with the problems caused by the cannister. To find out if the cannister is a problem test nitrate (not nitrite). If there is nitrate then removing the cannister will help, assuming of course you have liverock in the tank. However a low level of nitrate is acceptable, just what that level is varies from one organism to another. If nitrate is below 20 then keep the cannister but if nitrate is above that removing it will help.

In fact that is why I suggested looking at the cannister, when you said lateral line disease, i immediately thought you probably got a cannister or undergravel filter.

The electric current thing has been discussed for years on overseas boards, some believe it is the cause although again it's never been proved. While my personal opinion is it is not a cause, since you should really remove all possible causes, you can test for stray voltage with a Dick Smith voltmeter or similar, connect one end to an earth and the other end in the tank water. If there is anything you switch off each appliance in turn to find out which one is leaking electricity. The reason I'm not convinced about the electric current is i've had stray current in my tanks for years, with no lateral line disease. However that doesn't really prove anything i could have just got lucky.

Your diet sounds not too bad, however in the wild angelfish eat more of a vegetarian diet and increasing vegetarian content might help, but might not. Brine shrimp are very low in useful nutritian and should be regarded as a treat rather than a staple food, they are the equivalent of potato chips for fish.

Let's know what nitrate is, if you can test it. Don't just shut the cannister straight down, if it's doing a lot of filtration this could cause an ammonia or nitrite spike. You could probably shut one down, then a week or two later remove 1/2 the media from the other, than a week or two later remove the other completely. Testing ammonia and nitrite during this process to make sure there is no problem.

[pacific blue]

Is it possible to run the tank with out any external filteration??? There is no nitrate present and hasnt been for a long time. i will cut back on the shrimps, thanks. I also add reef plus to the tank. all corals and fish look good.

[wasp]

Yes it is absolutely possible to run the tank without a cannister and in fact it is desireable to run it without a cannister. Do you have coral rock in the tank? I'm not going to say no external filtration because that might include a skimmer.

However if there is no nitrate then it's not an issue, although it is a little surprising to be running two large cannisters but not have any nitrate. What brand of kit are you testing with?

Reef Plus is a different product to Reef Solutions.

Also just an edit what I said before that I didn't have any fish with lateral line disease, not quite true I have actually had fish with lateral line disease, back in the 80's when I had a FO system with an undergravel filter. The latest technology at the time :lol: .

[nz_mitch]

Grab some Salifert Energy from petplanet.co.nz

I'd be pretty confident if there's no nitrates it's a vitamin issue.

I highly recommend the above food and if you order some in new it'll be fresher and more likely to have the quality you need.

I'm guessing some nori mightn't be a bad idea either..