Originally Posted by SCSInet
This looks like environmental stress. It looks a little like velvet but your fish wouldn't be active, eating, or breathing normally if velvet was that established on the body.
Your nitrates are way too high.
Do a big water change... 20%-30%.
You can also use a chemical treatment like Prime to knock down the nitrates quick, but I'd try the water change first. You'll probably see a very quick improvement (in an hour or less) if you address that nitrate issue.
I'm curious why it got so high...
What is your water change regimen?
Tell us about your filtration.
How many fish are in the tank and how many gallons is it?
Are you skimming?
I am guessing it got high becasue I removed all live rock to hypo tank. The tank is 145 FOWLR. 3 fish: 4" clown trigger, 6" por puffer, 7" surge wrasse. I believe these fish are under environmental stress from partitioning the aquarium with a piece of plexiglass. I did this upon the introduction of the wrasse. I used to do this in freshwater with great success, maybe it does not work so well with saltwater fish. I am running a wetdry system recirculating water 6x an hour. My skimmer is the reef devil deluxe, and it had been not been running for a couple of weeks prior to last week ( I treated my fish w melafix last month for fin rot and had trouble getting it running). Since I have been hypoing I have been making plenty of water changes, so I am little puzzled as to why my nitrates wer so high. So I guess my big question is whether to pull my partition out and see if the fish get along or get more stressed out?
