scales falling off

[Nicklfire]

I got a email from a friend of mine and she`s having a problem with a fish, not sure what the problem is as i have not experienced it myself, maybe someone here will know, here is the email i got from her.

So I got a new fish yesterday and he's small. This morning I woke up and my tank was full of white floaty weird crap. After staring at it for an hour I realised my big white fish is loosing it's scales I think? When it swims and bumps into the tank all this stuff comes off in a cloud... Is he dying?

[Sandy Landau]

That sounds horrible. Is there any chance that the fish jumped out of the tank before the fish was given to the friend? Maybe the fish's scales dried out and the fish was damaged.

Is this a freshwater fish in a freshwater tank? Not a saltwater fish in a freshwater tank? The only thing I can think of if those are really scales coming off (and not parasites)and the fish was in good condition when it arrived, is that there's something horribly wrong with the water, like the water is full of chlorine and chloramine, or the water has been contaminated with caustic detergent, or a lot of chemicals have been added to the water (like many times the usual dose of minerals), and the fish's skin is burning off.

How are the fish's eyes?

I hope the fish can recover.