Blue tang :(

My tang for the past couple weeks i noticed was acting different. I've been busy with school so i didnt pay much attention until then. It would hid a lot more and then last weekend it was swimming down low next to the sand and it his between two rocks. Then a chromis died that night well it disappeared. i checked everything at the water was alright. the ammonia was really high but that was about it. my dad did a water change, took out the chiller(broken heated up tank) and then cleaned the whole tank. after that the tang hid under a rock and for a second i thought it went into shock and died. but it was swimming a little after. then after that this whole week its been hiding and barely eating. when it was eating it was slow and if the food he was going after moved jst a little bit, it didnt bother going after it jst slowed down and went straight. It started getting white dots on its top fins yesterday and the bottom of the tang was a blue-ish white color and that never went back to normal color -which was also happening that week but it was the whole body and it changed back- so this weekend i was going to put it in the hospital. So today i fell asleep and when i woke up and ran to check the water but the tang was jst laying on the rocks with stomach in, bumps on the skin, and white dots everywhere. we moved him(him/her idk calling it a him) a little to see if he was alive. he was but he was swimming sideways very slowly and looked horrible. i wanted to put him in the hospital to see if he would make it but my dad said that he's suffered enough so we let him go. Also i checked the water today and everything was great. my clownfish and other chromis are also doing great.
-sorry thats really long and prbly doesnt make sense

but i wanted to know if anyone knows what was wrong with it?? like is it a certain disease or something?? please help so if i get another and it starts happening again i can catch it sooner.

 

i wish i had pictures to show to make it easier to see what was going on but i didnt think to do that :/

 

Hi Deverss

The ammonia being high would explain the fishes colour fading - they eyes sometimes get a white covering over them when Ammonia levels are high

the white dots are a parasitic infection, possibly Ich
Tangs are more prone to parasitic infections than a lot of other species of fish

so high Ammonia and then tank maintenance -(stress) meant the fish was more likely to fall victim to the parasite

Im also a little worried that this fish was in the 19 gallon tank you mentioned on a previous thread about nems and peppermint shrimps. - I dont want to be the bearer of bad news, but if it was in the 19 gallon tank
then the death of another fish and resulting ammonia spike meant the risk to your other fish of ammonia poisoning was a lot higher than if they had been in a 75 gallon tank or larger

If it is the 19 gallon, my advice would be , dont replace the blue tang for that tank
I know you can buy them these days and they are smaller than Damsels , but they grow quickly and need a lot of swimming space and if you can provide that, then the tang should not fall victim to stress related parasitic infections as easily and frequently



Steve

 

What kind of tang are we talking about? There are a bunch of "blue" tangs . . . is it a regal, powder blue or maybe a unicorn? Also, what size tank and how long has it been set up?

~Will.

 

its a regal blue tang and yeah on the chromis before it died was hiding from me as well and the top of it looked like a few of its scales came off. is the tang aggressive?? it kept hitting my snails sometimes :/ so with the chromis i thought the tang attacked it.

 

You have a Regal Tang in a 19g aquarium? Shame on the LFS for selling that to you without asking what type of tank...Regals need at least a 55 gallons in my opinion...and they are a more difficult tang to keep...I went through the agony of getting my regal tang to be not stressed and my tank is 125Gallons but the fish FINALLY pulled through and is healthy now..and my water paramaters were PERFECT through the process..19G just isnt enough room for a tang...My suggestion is to 1. Get a bigger tank if you cannot live without a tang....or 2. IF you can get the fish to gain its health again...trade it in and get something that doesnt require so much room... I hope everything works out good for you though...i know you had good intentions and Regals are very pretty fish..just not for a 19g tank

 

Do you want to keep this fish? If not, you can return it to the store you got it from (they likely won't pay you for it at this point, but at least they can treat it so it may live). If you do want to keep it, you will need a much larger tank for it, as stated above. In addition to a larger tank, at this point it sounds like the fish is in bad shape and will require treatment in a quarantine tank.

Do you have a quarantine tank? If so, and if the fish is not doing well, I would recommend the following: Put it in the quarantine tank and dose with Seachem Paraguard. From your description, it sounds like the fish has crypt (marine ich). Crypt can kill fish by affecting its gills and slowly suffocating the fish. Paraguard works by quickly clearing the gills of parasites. You will need to treat it in the quarantine tank for at least 3 weeks, with large water changes every day or two.

Sound like a lot of work? It will be. But that is what will be required to treat a tang in this condition.