Purple Tang .... white mouth?

Logicbear · Feb 21, 2021

Hello I am bit concerned about my purple tang he has a white mouth. I attached some photos all other fish appear fine, all fish are eating well. I was hoping I could get some feed back and this would be something obvious to a more experienced fish keeper. Thank you in advance!

saltyfins · Feb 21, 2021

is this how you bought it, or did it just happen?

JumboShrimp · Feb 21, 2021

That's weird.

rlbarcroft · Feb 21, 2021

Logicbear said:
Hello I am bit concerned about my purple tang he has a white mouth. I attached some photos all other fish appear fine, all fish are eating well. I was hoping I could get some feed back and this would be something obvious to a more experienced fish keeper. Thank you in advance!

To me it looks like he has more white pigmentation around his mouth based on these pictures. But the quality is not as good as I would like. If it has a fuzzy appearance it could be a fungus, bacterial or other kind of infection.

Logicbear · Feb 21, 2021

saltyfins said:
is this how you bought it, or did it just happen?

I have had him for about 6 months .... this just happened. Everything seems fine just looks weird and concerning.

Logicbear · Feb 22, 2021

rlbarcroft said:
To me it looks like he has more white pigmentation around his mouth based on these pictures. But the quality is not as good as I would like. If it has a fuzzy appearance it could be a fungus, bacterial or other kind of infection.

It doesn't seem fuzzy at all and actually seems to be going back to normal. I know my scopas tang can go from black to nearly ghost white and back to normal in a course of minutes. Could this be something similar?

rlbarcroft · Feb 22, 2021

Logicbear said:
It doesn't seem fuzzy at all and actually seems to be going back to normal. I know my scopas tang can go from black to nearly ghost white and back to normal in a course of minutes. Could this be something similar?

rlbarcroft · Feb 22, 2021

It may also be a seasonal hormonal change to prepare for spawning. But as long as the fish doesn’t seem stressed he should be fine just keep an eye on him. Make sure you check your aquarium chemistry just to rule that out.