Lateral Line Erosion and healthy fish?

[AJinNY]

At the lfs they have a whole slew of tanks on one system...they share the same water.....I notice that a couple of tanks had I think they were scopas tangs with lateral line erosion.

My question is....is this contagious? Can the otherwise presumably healthy other fish sharing the same water system catch LLE or some other parasitic/bacterial disease?

Just curious.

[Woodstock]

IMO, HLLE is not contagious; however, if all fishes are exposed to the same aquarium conditions (diet, water quality, etc) then they may all show the same symptoms. Bacterial infections are caused from poor water quality. Several years ago, I had a fish that received a very, large and deep gash from a yellow tang; to my surprise, it healed up with no complications. Parasites are different all together, their life cycle allows for different types of transmission. In the early stages, they are attached to substrate, rocks, snail shells, etc; then later they are free-floating and can attach easily to fish. I once introduced ich into my tank via a large snail purchase

HTH

[Witfull]

most of the time HLLE is due to poor diet, no matter what species the fish. from fresh to salt, each fish needs "their" proper diet, herbivores need good quality grazing, carnivores need goodquality flesh. i have seen many fish that look horrible come back from HLLE once given a stable proper diet. it is common to see it in tangs due to stores not feeding greens and the sterility of holding tanks, but i have seen groupers that were fed a steady diet of goldfish get it too.

[AJinNY]

Thanks for the responses!