[Coral-List] A. bahianus disease (update and photos)

[Mcguire,Maia Patterson]

Hi Lucia,

I forwarded this to a fish disease colleague and here's his reply:

The cyst seems fairly thick, but my first guess (and if she can "pop" the cysts and expose the organism in side, it would be very helpful) would be either some sort of encysted digenean trematode or a turbellarian (i.e. sometimes referred to as "black ich" even though it is not a protist like ich--just because it looks sort of like it grossly and can multiply rapidly).
Ask if she has any more that she can "pop" open and take pics of.
Roy
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
 Roy P. E. Yanong, VMD  |  Associate Professor  |  Extension Veterinarian
 Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory  |  Program in Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences  |   School of Forest Resources and Conservation  |  University of Florida / IFAS
 1408 24th St. SE, Ruskin, FL  33570  |  813-671-5230 x 104  |  Fax: 813-671-5234   |  rpy at ufl.edu
 Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory:  http://tal.ifas.ufl.edu   |   Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences: http://sfrc.ufl.edu/fish/  |
 Aquariumania podcast: http://petliferadio.com/aquariumania.html

Maia

Maia McGuire, PhD
Florida Sea Grant Extension Agent
150 Sawgrass Road
Bunnell, FL 32110

386-437-7464

http://stjohns.ifas.ufl.edu/sea/seagrant.htm
http://facebook.com/NEFLSeaGrant
Educational videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/IFASCDistrict




_______________________________________
From: coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov [coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov] on behalf of Lucia M Rodriguez [l2rodrig at ucsd.edu]
Sent: Sunday, November 03, 2013 2:37 PM
To: coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Cc: rpeachy at ciee.org
Subject: [Coral-List] A. bahianus disease (update and photos)

Hello,
I wrote a while ago about certain dark spots that the majority of the
population of Ocean surgeonfish (Acanthurus bahianus) in Bonaire has been
exhibiting.
(Image: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ta814gqzqphky89/Acanthurus.JPG )
I got my hands on some diseased surgeonfish. Turns out, just under the
skin in the center of every dot (both on the fins and body) there is what
looks to me like an egg. About 1-2mm of width, it's semi transparent
white, and i could see movement within each of them through the light
microscope. Here's a link to pictures of some of them, and a video of the
movement within them too. Excuse the quality, it's as good as I could
manage.

Here's a couple pictures:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/99s1i9iisf4wuha/DiJ06HMVhJ

This one is a short video:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8o54mdhk4zjm5h/LR%20cyst%20alien3.wmv

This one is a much longer video. I tried with and without backlighting to
get a better view of what's within the cyst:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/50oiz9g3hocpfzq/LR%20cyst%20alien%20dorsalfin%20fish5%202.wmv

Does anyone know what these are?
I've looked around some books and papers on fish parasites and haven't
found anything that looks like it could be. Any help would be greatly
appreciated, I'm very curious.
Also, I looked around in the tissue of the fish, and only the little
"cysts" that are embedded in the skin are visible as blackened spots, but
there are many more around.
Have a wonderful week
Lucía Rodríguez
l2rodrig at ucsd.edu
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