Lateral Line Disease Treatment for Yellow Tangs - Help!

Ive begun to notice some pits form on the head of my yellow tang and her lateral line is showing. I'm quite confident it is lateral line disease but I've read all over for treatment plans and some of them are quite confusing. What I have been doing so far:

- I did a 30% water change. Did not seem to make much difference.
- Tried varying the diet even more(seaweed, marine flakes, pellets, frozen brine, freeze dried mysis shimp)
- Added Stress Coat - her fins were beginning to look red. Stress Coat did not help.

That was last week and her health has only worsen so now I'm at the point where I could catch her, put her in my 10 gallon hospital and use some strong medication but from what I've read you can't really medicate lateral line disease. I've also read about electrical current issues, I don't think my tank is not grounded, but how would you ground an acrylic tank and is that even a possible cause?

I'm running out of ideas to help my Tang and I really hate to see her health decline. She's been eating anything that goes into the tank and her color has not faded but she's been rubbing up against the live rock and scrapping herself lately so it's starting to worry me that she'll get an infection if she continues. Any help would be much appreciated!

 

IME, it is not a disease, but rather a nutritional deficiency.

I am surprised that all those kinds of greens have not helped.

it will take a few weeks, but you should see an improvement.

I soaked my nori in selcon when I acquired a sailfin with HLLE. About 2 months later, all signs of HLLE were gone and the fish was healthy.

 

Hmm. I felt like I was already close to over-feeding but she is always hungry it seems so I'll increase the amount of food (Stinks for this week because I'm going away for 2 days for thanksgiving).

On a side note I found one of those grounding probes. Should I even bother getting one or is there a way to determine if your tank is grounded?

 

Rather than feeding the tank more flakes/pellets, I would take a sheet of nori, soak it in selcon, and then clip it to the side of your tank. That way your tang can graze whenever she wants during the day. Tangs have a high metabolism, and it is better to feed them small frequent meals rather than large infrequent feasts.

But I would not suggest catching her and putting in QT, since that will only cause more stress and likely worsen the lateral line disease.

Oh, and getting a grounding probe wouldn't hurt, although it may not help either.

 

I order a grounding probe to rule out that as an issue. I also order some selcon solution (11 bucks for 60ml seems like a lot for little but hopefully I don't need much to treat with). I've been giving her garlic soaked seaweed now and I am going to do another 20% water change tomorrow(Nitrates were getting to around 15ppm). She's looked slightly better after giving her the seaweed everyday as opposed to every 3 days so nutrition may be the key here. Hopefully the selcon will help as well. Thank you for the advice JJK and Horkn, k+.

 

Lateral line disease can be caused by three things: Poor nutrition, poor water, and stray voltage. With the red fins I am leaning towards poor water quality as at least one of them. Red fins is a sin of ammonia poisoning. Water are the parameters? Are you running a grounding probe?
Poor nutrition could also be it? What kinds and different types of veggies are you feeding? Are you soaking the pellets, flake, and freeze dried foods? Neither brine nor freeze dried foods offer hardly any nutritional content at all unless you are soaking the food in something like selcon and vitamins.

 

I had some bad water about 2 weeks ago, but it was like .1 ppm nitrite reading after i forgot some seaweed in the tank, but after 2 days it was 0 ppm again so it didn't concern me too much. Ammonia has never gone above 0 ppm but my Nitrates were around 20 ppm after the .1 nitrite spike, but I also did a 30% water change a week ago and its been between 10-15 ppm since. I plan on doing a 20 % water change tomorrow. to hopefully bring that down some more. Salinity has stayed between 1.023 - 1.024.

I am not running a grounding probe yet, I ordered one so probably by Tues or Wed I'll have that installed.

I've been feeding the tang the following variety:
- Aqueon Tropical Flakes
- Nutrifin Max marine pellets(has vitamin C, E, and A)
- Nutrifin freezed dried Mysis flakes
- Garlic enriched seaweed
- Frozen Brine
- A small slice of a formula two cube

I ordered some selcon solution so I'll make sure to soak everything in that but is there any other types of food which would be good for the tang?

Thanks!

 

Veggies veggies veggies. I like to feed mine at least three types of seaweed. I am doing red, green, and purple currently. I also feed broccoli, which can rally help boost a tngs immune system.

 

How do you feed them broccoli? do you let it sit in some water first till it moistens? Would you just attach it to the veggie clip? I'd like to feed the tang some of that but wasn't really sure on the method of doing it.

Edit: Ok so after a little reading, it seems people boil the broccoli for 30 seconds to soften it then rubber band it to some LR. Does that sound right?

Thanks!

 

yes that is right lol