I don't think its bites guys. I have the same thing going on in one of my tanks. Those pics look almost exactly how my fish started. It is slow progressing and even slower if you are doing salt dips. The salt and Melafix in a hospital tank definitely slowed it down for me. But it kept coming back. They would get seemingly better, then go down hill fast. I have lost a yellow lab, a travasae, and a daktari. Right now I have a williamsi and a hara with it. they are in hospital tanks getting treated as we speak. I'm pretty sure it's a parasite I got from a travasae I got at petsmart. I know better but I was there getting worms for my turtles and seen him. 2 weeks later I went in and all the cichlid tanks are marked nfs/sick. At first I thought it was bites. It started as spots that looked like they had been beaten up. They were immediately quarantined. Then it turned to a white haze all over the fish. They got it one by one. Each fish progressed differently. The lab started showing what looked to be bleeding under the skin near the tail. Then fins started eroding, followed by heavy breathing, no eating , etc. then death. The travasae same type thing but eventually lost his entire tail and started losing flesh. At that point I euthanized him. The Williamsi just had clamped fins and is now in the stage of looking white all over with virtually no color. He is going down hill fast. The hara started with looked like white stuff on his gills and head very similar to your acei, and what looked to be a bite and ulcer on the gill area. Reading different stuff on the net, symptoms covered a bunch of stuff. I tried kanamycin, myricin 2, pimafix, and melafix on all of them. The best thing that helped was salt dips every night. It has definitely slowed the progression in the last 2. A couple days ago I finally think i nailed it. After hours of late night net time I found a parasite called costia that fit. All the pics and symptoms looked like what I have. I separated the hara and treated him with what little copper I had left. He has shown a marked improvement over the Williamsi. Even if its not Costia, the Hara has definitely responded to the copper better than anything else. Since I have the fish separated using all the same treatments other than the Copper, and only the one with copper is improving, I am headed to the Lfs to get some more tomorrow. I just hope its not too late.
