Blonde Naso Tang dead

DavidJTawil · Oct 30, 2020

So I woke up this morning to find my blonde Naso tang dead. I purchased it back in august and it went through an extensive quarantine process to insure no transfer of parasite/ disease to the display tank (copper power, prazi, metro). I attached a picture below. Any ideas as to what could’ve caused the death?

rlman41299 · Oct 30, 2020

Blonde naso are hard to care for. I've had my share of it that it came in really healthy and thrived for couple of months and all of a sudden die. Stress I would say would be a big factor since they are peaceful calm and timid creatures and they get stressed so easily. Well that was the case in my tank..
Any chance someone was stressing it specially during feeding time?

DavidJTawil · Oct 30, 2020

I had a baby hippo in observation with the naso. I’ve never seen them fight but who knows.

rlman41299 said:
Blonde naso are hard to care for. I've had my share of it that it came in really healthy and thrived for couple of months and all of a sudden die. Stress I would say would be a big factor since they are peaceful calm and timid creatures and they get stressed so easily. Well that was the case in my tank..
Any chance someone was stressing it specially during feeding time?

DaneGer21 · Oct 30, 2020

Like above, I know others have had success, but unfortunately for some reason I have failed twice with them over my 12yrs. After I read more and more and encountered many other stories, I’ve pretty much moved that fish to my “non compatibility/expert” side of my list...unfortunately because they are BEAUTIFUL!

Viva'sReef · Oct 30, 2020

One of the few fish I've never been able to keep. This and a powder blue.......and the powder blue is one of my favorite fish

Qasimja · Oct 30, 2020

was the fish eating well?

Vette67 · Oct 30, 2020

I will add as well that I have had a difficult time with Naso tangs. I have a purple Tang that will have been in my tank for 15 years in January, but I have had a few Naso’s die on me. I don’t know why they are difficult to keep, but they are. None of mine have lasted more than a couple months.

Sorry to hear about your loss.

Snoopy 67 · Oct 30, 2020

& I have had the opposite experience. 1st one in with 5 purples a Chevron & hippo.
2nd one not blonde but in with a powder blue.

Jay Hemdal · Oct 31, 2020

Probably too late now, but I often give freshly dead fish a FW dip, just to check to ensure they didn't have flukes. An even better option is to do a skin scrape, but you need a microscope to evaluate that.

That looks like a pretty small tang. The discoloration on the belly is probably just a post-mortem artifact, but is there same damage to the trailing edge of the caudal fin?

Jay

DavidJTawil · Oct 31, 2020

Yup. I’d feed it three times a day a mix of hikari seaweed extreme pellets and lfs reef frenzy. Would eat like a pig. Around 3 weeks ago he went on a hunger strike for two days then started eating again.

Qasimja said:
was the fish eating well?

DavidJTawil · Oct 31, 2020

I doubt it was flukes since I treated it with prazi. I would consider investing in a microscope to observe and inspect skin scrapings of fish. Any suggestions on a good microscope?

Jay Hemdal said:
Probably too late now, but I often give freshly dead fish a FW dip, just to check to ensure they didn't have flukes. An even better option is to do a skin scrape, but you need a microscope to evaluate that.

That looks like a pretty small tang. The discoloration on the belly is probably just a post-mortem artifact, but is there same damage to the trailing edge of the caudal fin?

Jay

DavidJTawil · Oct 31, 2020

Yup it was about 2.5 - 3 inches. It did seem to have the same discolouration on the caudal fin. It appeared post-mortem and wasn’t there prior. I found the corpse on small power head so that could’ve been the cause of the discolouration.

Jay Hemdal said:
That looks like a pretty small tang. The discoloration on the belly is probably just a post-mortem artifact, but is there same damage to the trailing edge of the caudal fin?

Jay

Jay Hemdal · Oct 31, 2020

DavidJTawil said:
I doubt it was flukes since I treated it with prazi. I would consider investing in a microscope to observe and inspect skin scrapings of fish. Any suggestions on a good microscope?

Amscope binocular dissecting scopes run about $140. I bought a microscope for my iPhone for $17 though.
Jay