Uronema on blue tang??? Newbeie, please help

Dena72 · Sep 19, 2023

This is my first saltwater tank that I purchased second hand with all the equipment & 4 fish. Its a 90 gal tank with a clown, blue tang, saltwater angle & I'm not sure what the other one is. I have this set up at my place of employment so I don't see it on the weekends. When I left of Friday everything was normal. Monday morning I came in to find my blue tang with a ugly red place on his tail. I have read every forum I can find & its all so confusing & I still can't decided if its infection or injury. Can someone please help. He seems to be eating fine & acting normal. The white spots were on him when I got the tank. She said he had had issues when he was younger & they were scars.

blaxsun · Sep 19, 2023

#fishmedic

Jay Hemdal · Sep 19, 2023

Dena72 said:
This is my first saltwater tank that I purchased second hand with all the equipment & 4 fish. Its a 90 gal tank with a clown, blue tang, saltwater angle & I'm not sure what the other one is. I have this set up at my place of employment so I don't see it on the weekends. When I left of Friday everything was normal. Monday morning I came in to find my blue tang with a ugly red place on his tail. I have read every forum I can find & its all so confusing & I still can't decided if its infection or injury. Can someone please help. He seems to be eating fine & acting normal. The white spots were on him when I got the tank. She said he had had issues when he was younger & they were scars.

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

That isn't the location where Uronema is seen, and this species doesn't get Uronema, and that almost always shows up in new fish.

It looks to me to be an injury, but I'm not sure what could have caused that. Injuries can turn into bacterial infections though. Trouble is, to treat bacterial infections, you would need an isolation tank and move the tang to that - you cannot really add antibiotics to your main tank.

If it doesn't grow larger over the next few days, I would just keep an eye on it to see if it heals on its own.

Jay