Help - fish breathing rapidly

[Tlc]

The fish are good they are still acting different but not gasping for air or anything! I noticed my blue tang is very skiddish and rubbing around on things! My bi color has what looks like a little white grain of salt on her spine that hasn't come off in a couple days so I know it's not an air bubble lol and if you look at pic 1 the tang looks like she has something white also In the middle of her spine.

[mr_X]

regal tangs are pretty skiddish in the beginning anyway IME.

[Tlc]

Ok. So how will I know when I is safe to put another companion in there? Should I wait till the 110 is finished cycling? Right now it's producing ammonia nitrite and nitrate where as the 55 still has 0 for all!

[Brad.Sedore]

Basicly what my sick fish looked like was these gaint white blotchs oozing with mucas. varied from fish to fish but for the most part the excess mucas was the dead give away. also the fact that it did not infect my chromi or eel which ruled out heavy metals or something in the water. it was a very brutal parasite luckily i saved 5 fish (hoevens wrasse, saddle back clown, tomato clown and 2 blue damsel) unfortunatly it killed my dottyback,lionfish,butterfly and majestic angel. the really tough part was getting formalin (formaldehyde) which is not readily for sale in canada.

[Tlc]

Oh no sorry about your fish. I should probably get some formalin and keep it on hand then! No there is no mucous or anything! Foxface was completely stiff and looked like he suffered a heart attack! I'm thinking hard medals or ich but I don't know how it only killed 1 fish and he was a good hardy fish. I did have a lawnmower blenny die 48 hrs before the problem began. I did a 5gallon water change just in case. 2 days later my fish freaked out and my water smelled bad and the water was flat no air bubbles nothing! I did a 20gallon water change changed my airstone and
Now I have thousands of air bubbles! But the whole time ammonia was 0 and so were nitrite and nitrate. Hopefully it's gone whatever it was.

[Brad.Sedore]

likely an O2 issue.

ive always been told not to use air stones in SW but ive never been sure why lol i think the bubbles mess with PH or something you might jsut want to get some powerheads to "disturb" the surface of the water.