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Originally Posted by monza
With out a picture I'm just guessing but it could be a common ailment known as lymphocystis. It's an infection that sort of looks like cauliflower and happens with poor water quality usually on newly shipped fish.
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Brought home a chevron butterfly several weeks ago. The fish kept getting what I thought was ich every other week on its pec fins, though none of the other fish sharing the tank with the butterfly have displyed similar symptoms. Phoned the lfs where I bought it and asked to talk to the manager. Explained to him about the "ich" problem and he thought it was lymphocystis and not ich at all.
He was kind enough to get out his fish ailments book to better describe lymphocystis and its treatment, which there are few because it's a virus. After reading about some of the more drastic treatments for severe cases, he told me to increase the heat in my tank.
Then I researched the virus on the internet to verify that increased heat will indeed cure the fish. Most sites on lymphocystis talk about wild fish stocks and one in particular said that during the heat of summer the virus often goes away. So, I increased the heat in the tank with the butterfly.
In the three weeks the temp has been 81-82 F, instead of 77-78 F, the fish has not been bothered by the lymphocystis. I would keep tank temps higher for a longer period of time, but we are getting a shipment of snails this week, I am slowly going to reduce tank temps and hope the lymphocystis does not return. If it does return, I will increase tank temps again.
The 3" butterfly is in a one year old 120g with ~140 lbs LR, no sandbed, no skimmer, no sump or refugium. 15% water changes done weekly, crud from the bottom of the tank is siphoned weekly, powerheads and foam media prefilters are thoroughly cleaned weekly. Lots of macroalge in the tank to utilize nutrients. Nitrate is 5 ppm.
HTH.