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

Lucia M Rodriguez l2rodrig at ucsd.edu
Sun Nov 3 14:37:10 EST 2013


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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