Angelfish mystery disease?

Hi everyone,

This is my female angelfish, Bob; she has had these 2 white bumps on her for about 3 months. There is one on her caudal fin and one on her left pectoral fin, close to her “armpit.” They have not spread or changed in size. I have not seen her once flashing or trying to rub them off. Over this time, we have treated for ich with Ich X, raised the temperature to 86, AND used the UV sterilizer. These bumps did not disappear and did not spread. I also have 2 white cloud minnows and 2 botia loaches and they all do not have these bumps. Next, I treated for epistylis with kanaplex with food and lowering the temperature to 78 F.Apparently, you’re supposed to lower it to 70 F, but I didn’t want to cause additional stress to Bob with a drastic temperature change. I figured the kanaplex would do most of the legwork. The last thing that I have not tried is doing a salt dip for epistylis or any protozoan parasite this MIGHT be. Bob does not handle being transported well, so I don’t know if this is worth trying because of the stress. I might be acting overly cautious because Bob is generally happy and not stressed; she eats well, is very active, and her color and form are all in good condition. We are looking to upgrade her tank size because she has outgrown it. I suppose this might be a cause of stress and maybe those bumps as a sort of secondary infection from low level stress. Overall, Bob seems healthy, but it’s frustrating not knowing what these bumps are and why they haven’t responded to treatment. One more thing— Bob seems to be very slightly tilted on her left when upright. I do not know if this is because the tank is physically too small, or if it’s pathological. I don’t entirely buy that it’s the former because she does have enough vertical room to be completely upright. However, this is my first angelfish I have kept, so perhaps she really doesn’t have enough space. Either way, I’m planning on upgrading. Any insight would be helpful here, thanks.

Specs:

Cycled 23.5 gal with Fluval 207 Canister Filter + In-Line UV Sterilizer (looking to upgrade in size)

Temperature: 78 F

Ammonia: 0 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: 10 ppm
pH: 7.2
GH: 180 ppm* (may be higher, the test strip read 180 as the highest value)
KH: 80 ppm

*tap water is hard water

It's one of the nicest angels I've seen on the forum. And to me, those look like cysts, probably from old injuries. They often have them, and they're harmless.

They look awesome ! And your picture quality is outstanding !

GaryE said:

It's one of the nicest angels I've seen on the forum. And to me, those look like cysts, probably from old injuries. They often have them, and they're harmless.

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Wow! That’s quite a statement, and it sure makes me happy to be at least partially responsible for her beauty! I actually purchased her at a LFS thinking she was a male. I will definitely look into this more. It is either cysts as you say or something viral (someone on a different forum suggested this), since I covered all the parasitic, fungal, and bacterial bases. Thank you for your response I really appreciate it.

Fin cysts sit on the rays, directly. usually, a bite fractured the ray, and that develops as a result.

The pectoral would worry me more, but it's also a common injury spot. Viral fish pox things are all over the body.

Young angels have ways of hurting each other. But your angel has wild type colouration, and real quality wild type fin length. A lot of badly bred domestic forms have huge bodies and stumpy fins. Your angel is elegant.

Nearly all ciclids and a lot of other will start to aim at the gills of their opponent as soon as it starts to have difficulty. defending self.

Operculum scratches and broken fin "ribs" are witness to attacks occurrences.

Fishes with pectoral fin damages are often "gill targeted" and use their fins to protect their gills in addition to being able to close operculums.

Tetra's and barbs do it all the time.

Edit: A lot of incidents are sucker punches.

The white dot on the tail and pectoral fin are calcium deposits caused by living in hard water. It can also be from damage to the fin rays but the fins look normal shaped so it's most likely calcium. It's nothing major but is an indication the fish is getting too much calcium, which can cause long term problems to the kidneys and other organs and might shorten the fish's lifespan a bit. Mixing the tap water with reverse osmosis, rain or distilled water (50/50) would drop the GH and reduce the chance or long term problems.

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Epistylis is a protozoan parasite. Kanaplex is an antibiotic (Kanamycin). Antibiotics work on bacteria, not protozoa. Improper use and mis-use of antibiotics has created drug resistant bacteria that kill people, animals, birds, fish and reptiles. In future try to find out what the problem is before throwing medications into the tank.

Epistylis is normally found in dirty tanks and cleaning the conditions up usually fixes the problem. Salt can also be used or a white spot medication.

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The fish has 2 white dots and some pitting around the face. This looks like the start of hole in the head disease, which is caused by a parasite called Hexamita. It normally occurs in dirty tanks or tanks with a lot of rotting gunk in. It's in its early stages and should be treatable with cleaning the tank and adding salt, (see directions below for salt). The salt should kill the parasites and the white dots should go but the pitting will remain as scars. If salt doesn't treat it then you might need Metronidazole but try salt and clean water first.

Do the following.
Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge. This removes the biofilm on the glass and the biofilm will contain lots of harmful bacteria, fungus, protozoans and various other microscopic life forms.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week. The water changes and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in. It also removes a lot of the gunk and this means any medication can work on treating the fish instead of being wasted killing the pathogens in the gunk.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use the media. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens so any medication (if needed) will work more effectively on the fish.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration to maximise the dissolved oxygen in the water.

After a week of daily cleaning go back to doing water changes once a week and add some salt. After that clean the filter once a month.

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SALT
You can add rock salt (often sold as aquarium salt), swimming pool salt, or any non iodised salt (sodium chloride) to the aquarium at the dose rate of 1 heaped tablespoon per 20 litres (5 gallons) of water. If there is no improvement after 48 hours you can double that dose rate so there is 2 heaped tablespoons of salt per 20 litres.

Keep the salt level like this for at least 2 weeks but no longer than 4 weeks otherwise kidney damage can occur. Kidney damage is more likely to occur in fish from soft water (tetras, Corydoras, angelfish, Bettas & gouramis, loaches) that are exposed to high levels of salt for an extended period of time, and is not an issue with livebearers, rainbowfish or other salt tolerant species.

The salt will not affect the beneficial filter bacteria, fish, plants, shrimp or snails.

After you use salt and the fish have recovered, you do a 10% water change each day for a week using only fresh water that has been dechlorinated. Then do a 20% water change each day for a week. Then you can do bigger water changes after that. This dilutes the salt out of the tank slowly so it doesn't harm the fish.

If you do water changes while using salt, you need to treat the new water with salt before adding it to the tank. This will keep the salt level stable in the tank and minimise stress on the fish.

When you first add salt, add the salt to a small bucket of tank water (2 litres or 1/2 gallon) and dissolve the salt. Then slowly pour the salt water into the tank near the filter outlet. Add the salt over a couple of minutes.

I don't often disagree with Colin, but I see no hexamita. I would do the basic, 30-40% water changes every week, forever, no matter the tank size, and just keep an eye on it.

I've had cysts on the fins of angels in very soft, low calcium water, but it makes sense it would be more likely in harder water. I would try to get a real reading, as too hard water will affect the longevity of the fish. The idea that fish will easily adapt to any water conditions just because they're captive bred is one of the least logical comforting myths of the hobby - a bit of magical thinking that's often repeated til it sounds sensible. The readings you have aren't crazy hard, but I would check into the real hardness.

You obviously care for that (those) fish and take excellent care of them.

GaryE said:

I don't often disagree with Colin, but I see no hexamita. I would do the basic, 30-40% water changes every week, forever, no matter the tank size, and just keep an eye on it.

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1st post, 4th picture down, shows the face of the angelfish. There are 2 small white dots on the gill cover below the eye and they appear to be set in a small depression, which looks like the start of hexamita.