Longnose Butterfly's Gross Bump

auntkaren

Member
I think our Longnose Butterfly has a problem. Last night he was perfectly normal looking. This morning he has a large ugly boil-like lump on his right side beneath his eye. It looks reddish sometimes but the pictures I've (hopefully) included don't seem to show the redness. He's very active and is eating as he normally does.
He is in a 180 Gallon reef tank. (Forgive me for this but) the salinity, alk, pH, nitrates, nitrites, calcium and ammonia levels are all well within normal range and have been each week for the past year. We test weekly and do waterchanges weekly using ro/di water for the change.
There are about 190 lbs of Live Rock, 3 - 4 inches of live sand the regular clean up crew of snails and hermit crabs with 2 serpent stars, a sea cucumber?? 2 mithrax crabs and a lonely peppermint shrimp. I think that's it.
He has been in the tank for 1-1/2 years and is housed with 3 chromis, 3 pj cardinals, 2 false percula clowns, a sixline wrasse and a pink barred shrimp gobie. The latest addition to the tank was the transfer of the gobie from our nano tank which was in good health (the whole tank). The latest "outside" addition is the 6 line wrasse which was added 4 months ago. All fishes are healthy and active.
None of the other fish in the tank are showing signs of what is happening to the butterfly.
So..... Can anyone give me some idea of what is happening to this fish and what can be done to help?


 

auntkaren

Member
No the skin is not broken at all. It looks like a boil. In the past couple hours it has gotten larger.
It is not warty looking in any way.
 

auntkaren

Member
The pics above were taken around 11 a.m this morning. The new pics were taken at 7:30 pm this evening. He's getting worse
HELP!
 

beth

Administrator
Staff member
I'm thinking it is an abscess/tumor and it my break open. There is not much you can do about this, especially while the fish is in the display tank. Do you have a quarantine?
 

auntkaren

Member
LOL we took the QT down about 3 weeks ago. It had been up and running for nearly a year with no occupants. If necessary we can use water change water to fill the tank and put some live sand and LR in it. We do 20 gallon water changes on the 180 weekly and the QT/HT is only 10 gallons.
If we put him into QT what would you suggest we do? Just put him in and watch him or add something? One problem, though, we are going on a 12 day vacation in a few weeks and the critter sitter would be far too leery of doing much more than feeding the tank. I'm hoping to leave him in the DT and just monitor him closely.
Today the lump is a bit less swollen but the underneath part is definately red. He's still his active ornery self and eats and eats and eats per usual. How would he come up with a boil anyway? Could he have been avoiding a crab or something and knocked into rock?
 

auntkaren

Member
Wow...that was an awful sore your fish had. I'm sorry for your loss on him he was beautiful.
No, the longnose's sore doesn't look like that but your description sure fit. Now the sore is less swollen but it is red and getting bumpy. It follows under the eye and up toward the mouth. I'm using fresh garlic to soak his food in that's about all I can think of to do for him. He seems healthy otherwise but he looks awful!
Does anyone have any suggestions?
 
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