Dead BFly

[EmilyB]

I just purchased a Red Sea Butterfly. It looked awesome upon arrival. Within a few hours it seemed to have a sore on it's head. This grew quickly and today the fish is dead. The only glimpse I have of that is a quick video shortly after she arrived.

My question is, could she have run into the foxface? They seemed to like each other so it would have been an accident.

The other occupants are a saddleback clownfish, two cleaner shrimp, urchin, starfish, various baby bta's, etc.

[WuHT]

could be... heard on some faqs at WWM that tangs have run into foxfaces with bad results.

red sea butterflyfish = ?

[justinl]

yeah it's a very remote bottom-feeding-shite-tastic-bad-luck sort of event, but it can happen to fish that are friendly with foxfaces. happens more to slow fish like puffers rather than the swift swimming sort of fish like tangs and butterflies. depending on how bad the stab is and how much venom gets injected, the wound may be fatal to a fish.

[Pan]

There should be a peircing...even if ever so slight , there should be a little hole of some sort. If there is no puncture wound at all i would rule out the foxface. It happened to a couple of tangs of mine...a scopas and a yellow. they had an obvious though slight puncture wound, not just a sore.
http://home2.pacific.net.ph/~sweetyummy42/
Under diseases he has afew pictures and infos that might aid in your search for a cause. Hope it helps.



I just purchased a Red Sea Butterfly. It looked awesome upon arrival. Within a few hours it seemed to have a sore on it's head. This grew quickly and today the fish is dead. The only glimpse I have of that is a quick video shortly after she arrived.

My question is, could she have run into the foxface? They seemed to like each other so it would have been an accident.

The other occupants are a saddleback clownfish, two cleaner shrimp, urchin, starfish, various baby bta's, etc.

[michika]

I've experienced death by foxface a few times and this is what I have always seen;
- puncture wound, I've never seen redness or swelling at the site, just a small hole depending on the size of the foxface.
- the fish then have problems breathing, very heavy and hard breathing.
- Erratic swimming, up and down and up and down towards the middle of the occurance
- The last stage seems to be loss of swim bladder control, continued heavy breathing, and finally death.

I'm really sorry about your butterfly.

[EmilyB]

Thanks, guys. I think I will have to rule out the fox. There was no puncture wound at all. Also no redness. It grew like an ulcer under the skin, in the brain area. I think it went necrotic and quite quickly. That area was quickly consumed by scavengers before I found the body.

Ol'no'bo, thanks for the link. Very interesting, and somewhat frightening. The myxobolus actually sounded like it could be a possibility. Man, what if I have something like that in my tank....:eek: