tomini tang losing pigmentation??

Hey, my tomini tang is starting to get lighter patches of grey color on his body. He has about 3 little blotches of color that has faded to a lighter grey on the sides of his body, any ideas?

 

a picture would help. maybe hes going camo?

 

Sometimes my fish will get a light patch when they've been too close the the foxface. But that clears up

 

Look here at the second question. If that picture is what you have, it's likely stress induced.

 

What is he eating. Thats usually the main source. If they aren't getting protein and there vegs they will have discoloration

 

he gets a mixture of mysis shrimp, to frozen veggie cube, algae clips, and spirulina flakes, I'll have to get some pictures up, the one pic on the link looked kind of similar with the grey patch, he is active and has been in the tank over a year with the same mates. Myabe stressed, I mean the Cubs baseball season is about to begin, could be it.

 

Mysis doesn't really do anything special for bristletooth tangs. They need detritus and some algae. Don't blow the random crud off your rocks, let the tang eat it. Also, let algae grow on some surfaces of the tank. These fish are constant grazers; they won't do well on a feeding or two a day. Mine eats from lights on to lights out, and is eating about 70% of the time. As an example, here's my tank with my Kole tang (same family of tangs as the Tomini):


You need somewhere with algae like the sides or back of the tank, and the grayish "crud" that settles in the rocks and in low flow areas, otherwise they definitely won't be happy with their diets.

 

Muggle, how long has the tank been running?

Bristletooth tangs are very heavily dependent on film algae, detritus, and other stuff that only grows on an established tank's surfaces.

Many times B tooth tangs won't even eat any prepared foods. In that case, they either starve or eat the food your tank naturally makes. Seeing that yours does eat prepared foods, try putting a drop of selcon in the food, and maybe a a grungy piece of LR from a tank that has been running a while if your tank isn't that old.

A 120g will easily have enough space for the films that a Ctenochaetus tang needs to survive, but it has to be established before the tang will be able to have enough to eat.

 

Tomini Pictures

attached are the pictures of my tomini, I have had him over a year, he is in my 120 that I upgraded this past september, the back wall has algae/coral line as that is the wall that I do not scrub, he has been fine over the last year besides occasional fin nippings but these color blotches showed up about a week ago.