Is this bad?

Silent · Oct 13, 2020

I came home from work and saw my yellow tang like this. All other fish are healthy. It looks like he slammed into the rock and smashed his snout and scratched the top of his head and fin.
What do you think? Is it a disease?

Jay Hemdal · Oct 13, 2020

Trouble with mouth injuries is they can put the fish off feed. Is the YT still eating?
I wonder why the fish would have hit something hard enough to do that, anything like kids that might have startled it?
Jay

Silent · Oct 13, 2020

It has always been the crazy tang type but never self inflicted injuries.
He has not ate yet. It looks bad. What can I do?

Sharkbait19 · Oct 13, 2020

Best you can do is fight infection. Isolate it and give it meds to help heal/prevent further illness, and it will slowly get better. If it got injured, it’s likely stressed. Time is an important factor in fish healing. So long as your parameters are in check and you are doing everything to help your tang, it should pull through. So my two cents is, this situation is only as bad as you make of it. I’ve had some fish I’ve been able to help recover from injury, and some that I didn’t do enough for and dropped dead. My big point— keep the water clean, the environment stress free, and keep monitoring your fish’s health. If it gets exponentially worse, start treating for a bacterial infection.

Jay Hemdal · Oct 13, 2020

That’s the trouble with mouth injuries, the fish stop eating, and then have difficulty repairing the damage.
I just noticed the moorish idol in the first image, are the other fish doing o.k.?
How long have you had the tang?
Jay

Silent · Oct 13, 2020

All other fish are doing great. I've had the tang for 6 months. Local reefer shut their tank down and gave him to me.

vetteguy53081 · Oct 13, 2020

Like my tangs. . . they can be very skiddish and startle easily. Is the fish even trying to get to the food during feeding? SW have the ability to heal themselves qquickly from injury but cant say the same applies for this hard injury from looks of the mouth.

JGT · Oct 13, 2020

Silent said:
All other fish are doing great. I've had the tang for 6 months. Local reefer shut their tank down and gave him to me.

Any chance he got his mouth torn up from a power head? Like eating algae off of one and his lips got through the guard. Just asking cause it is a nasty injury and looks like his lips mighta gotten torn up by a power head or another fish.