As most of you know, I work my day job right next to the tank. I didn’t see this yesterday, all I saw was a possible whitening of the section on the dorsal fin. When I turned the lights on this am its much different. The tang is still searching the rocks for algae, and eating flakes this am. It does not appear to have labored breathing at this point either. Any guess to what it is, and how I might be able to treat it? Sofar the neither the clown or two chromis appear to be affected…and I’d like to keep it that way. I guess this talk about a QC tank is for real.
3 pictures. I’ve “doodled” in photobucket, the areas of concern. I’ve also provided the same picture un-edited. Sofar the issue on the gill area is limited to one side.
Sometimes I see brown spots on my tang also, but no health issues with it.
Do you feed it any nori?
I get mine from the supermarket in the Asian section, just look for the dried seaweed.It is essential to their good health. They love the stuff, as do all tangs. Just rubber band some to a rock piece and place in your tank.
Hope this helps.
Good call. I’ve only put one piece of nori in there sofar…as he was busy decimating what little hair algae I had in the tank, but now that its gone, perhaps I need to put it in daily. How big of a piece do you typically put in, and do you feed it daily, or weekly, or…? A pinch of flake food vs. a 1"x2" piece of nori and I start to think I’m overfeeding the tank. I just clipped in a 1"x2" piece of nori.
Water test looks good as far as pH, NO2, NH3-4, NO3 is @ 10ppm, Salinity between 1.025-1.026
I use two big pieces daily in different locations, because I have some tangs and want them all to get a share. I don’t believe the nori will alter your water chemistry, but not sure on that.
The piece you put in sounds good, see how much of it is eaten in a day. You could do some nori every other day, watch and see what is better for your tank.
Update: Tim the Tang didn’t make it. He was a trooper though, eating up until maybe a day before he passed, where he just hung out in the internals of the aquascape and passed overnight. Whatever it was, it didn’t spread to the other fish. I MIGHT have been able to save him with some medication that I saw at the LFS but I didn’t have a quarantine tank setup, and didn’t want to nuke the main tank w/ meds. So I guess I’m partly responsible for his demise for not being setup correctly, but do feel like I’m setup like 90% of the rest of the hobby.
I will say though, that now that I’ve had one, yellow tangs are awesome. Great personality, you can see their eyes looking around at you as they swim around the tank, feeding them nori is cool (to me at least), and he was a HELL of a lawnmower for any minimal amount of HA that I had on a few pieces of rock. He was a little shy once anyone would initially situate themselves infront of the tank, but within a few seconds he was like “oh, I guess we’re bros’ now” and come check you out. One of the coolest fish in my tank so far, I can see why people keep em.
I will say though, that outside of the two chromis and the tank raised Percula from Jason @ Clownfish Sushi, the other 3 fish that I’ve bought from an LFS didn’t make it, making me a little concerned.
Tangs can be extremely delicate. Most are still wild caught (which presents it’s own issues as you are finding out) and they have trouble adapting to captive life. I think yellow tangs and hippo tangs suffer from more diseases, mostly due to nutritional and activity defecits, than almost any other commonly available fish. I think most people will agree it can be challenging to get a healthy specimen.
The QT tank is needed before you add a fish to the display. Not to treat a sick one. That’s a hospital tank.
I think your other fish will be just fine. Like I said, new Tangs can be challenging.
Depending on the timeline, I may or may not be concerned about the LFS fish not making it. I’ll explain - this is the same reason I refrain from buying fish the day they arrive at the fish store…
Fish wakes up on a Monday morning at 7am and starts swimming around a 300 acre reef.
At 11am the big fish making all those bubbles scoops it up in a net.
At 11:15 that fish is dumped in to a bucket on a boat with 50 other fish scooped up on that dive.
At 4 pm the fish is dumped in to a different holding tank at the collectors facility
At 5pm some guy in a warehouse sends an email out listing that particular fish and 300 more now available for delivery to the distributors.
At 5AM the fish is scooped from the holding tank, stuffed in a bag, stuffed in a cooler, and hauled to the airport. Roughly handled, jostled, and tossed around by the airport handlers, and stuffed in the cargo hold of a plane.
At 10AM the fish arrives in Los Angeles, is taken from it’s bag in the dark, and dumped in to a holding tank under full flourecent light.
At 12 Noon an email goes out from the distributor to the stores that it, and 300 of his friends are available.
At 5PM the fish is scoooped from his tank, stuffed in a plastic bag, jammed in an insulated box, and taken to the airport.
The fish then sits around until about 11PM when the plane flies it to the east coast.
At 5AM the fish is taken off the plane, and stored in a warehouse.
At 8 Am the guy from the LFS picks the fish up fro the airport, transports it an hour back to his store, and dumps (ok I know most do not just dump, but you get the idea) the fish in to a display tank with a sale sticker.
At 5PM in you walk -“ooo look how pretty” and take it home.
So back in the bag it goes, then stuffed in to a plastic bag, or a cooler, out in to the january east coast air, fro a 20 min drive back to your hosue.
Then you acclimate and add to your display tank, where it’s now low man on the totem pole, with 7 other fish that have alreaady defined territories and nip and pick and show their dominace.
Long story short - that fish is under just a tad bit of stress, hasn’t eaten in 3 days, has been in about 5 different bags, and is freaking out a little. Stress is enough to kill any animal, that much stress could be a definitive nauil in a fishy coffin. I muuch prefer to wait a few days after the fish has gotten tot he store before purchasing. I always hope that it’s still there when I go back, and often it isn’t, but at least that way it’s not my $70.
Thats exactly how I’m gonna approach fish purchases at this point too Craig. I can’t imagine its inappropriate to ask an LFS how long a fish has been in-store. As you said, especially with the more popular fish, its hit/miss if its gone the next time you stop in. I’ll have to ask the LFS if they’ll hold a fish for a week if I pay in full for it on the initial visit. I can see how this might be frowned upon as this increases the human element of error that said fish gets netted by mistake, but I can also see how it could be a process improvement that also carries a certain level of increased customer satisfaction.
When buying a fish, I always ask the person from the store to place some kind of food in the tank to see if the fish I am interested in purchasing is eating.
sorry to hear Rob… imho its a crap-shoot… eating/ not eating is the only thing i think can increase your chances/ that and captive breeding. :TWOCENTS
I had perfectly healthy tangs, eating like pigs for months just go downhill like yours… 3 years later, tangs that were with the deceased are still going strong…
