What's up with this?

[tamtam]

I know colour changes are pretty normal in some fish as they mature but to what extent? What about blackness/dark spots?

My Sunset Gourami has gotten an explosion of black marks over the past few weeks. They are like a speckled look up on his "face". Some of these arrived well over a month ago and it's spread out more.

When it first arrived I thought maybe I somehow screwed up and it was ammonia burns healing despite my weekly changes and having had no off test results.

I noticed last night that he's gotten some black showing up in his anal fin It's sort of filling in the lighter spots, similar to what is going on on his face.

It doesn't look like anything that is ON him, it looks part of him. Could this be some other illness?

Here are a couple of the better pix I could grab.

I darkened this picture a bit to get a better look, so the black isn't so severe IRL.

this probably best shows the markings on his anal fin

Any ideas? He's acting mostly normal. A but shy but I think it's because I had to remove a chunk of cover from the tank this week and haven't been able to replace it so he's hiding more than he usually would

 

[Fighting fish]

It is definitely an illness, he shouldn't have black spots, might be caused by stress?

 

[jlk]

I have no experience with guys so I dont know if this would be considered normal color change or its just stress. In goldfish, black areas that develop are either ammonia burns (I doubt this is your case!) or fluke issue. I would wait to see what other members that have experience with these guys have to say!

 

[tamtam]

thanks guys. The only thing I can think it may be is stress related.

I don't think it's a fungus or parasite as it's been around for a while, at this point I'm pretty certain it would have killed him or shown up on other fish. I also had to treat with Melafix a couple weeks ago and that had no effect on it. The treatment was almost a month after the spots showed up too.

I can't see a water quality issue as I've only got a small angel and a few neons in a 30 gallon with him and do weekly water changes. I'm running to hobs on it too so plenty of filtration.