Yellow Tang Blunt Force Trauma

[erk]

I woke up this morning to my yellow tang exhibiting muscle spasms and almost no control over its body. I noticed quite a few damaged corals which tells me it must have been spooked last night and did a mad dash into everything. Right now I have it in my acclimation box to keep it safe. The tang has several bruise marks over its body. I don't see anything on its head.

The most worrying signs are I don't see the gill covers moving. They are slightly agape, but no visible opening and closing. The tail fin occasionally "vibrates." The pectoral and pelvic fins seemed to move a bit, but not sure if that is water movement or the tang.

This guy was a rescue from my local Petco. I've had it for at least a year if not longer. I spent several weeks when I first got him/her just trying to pack on weight. Since then, it's been happy and healthy. I really don't want this to be the end for this fish. Is there something I can do? Should I try blowing water thru its gills?

 

[BestMomEver]

Gosh.... I’ve never heard of that. Hey! @4FordFamily !

 

[HotRocks]

You can hold the fish in front of flow to increase the oxygen.

Can you upload pics? Do you have any other tangs?

 

[erk]

The tang didn't make it. I tried holding it in the flow and tried using a nose bulb to direct flow into the mouth. Nothing helped. I think I was just too late and what I saw were the last signs of life. I raised the tang out of the water to see if it would respond and nothing. Since I'm unsure if the tang was still alive, but fully paralyzed, I decided to put it in the freezer to end its pain.

Some things I noticed after the lights came on:
Lateral Line was "bleeding". It had what appeared to be blood seeping out under the surface. One side was worse than the other. One side had internal bleeding that stretched from the head to the tail. Other side was just near the tail.
I saw a very large dark bruise just above the eyes, before the dorsal fin.
Eyes appear bloodshot. As if blood had started seeping into the eye cavity. Maybe it was just a color change, but never seen dark red before.

If people would like, I can take some pictures for future reference to help others. If my little buddy is gone, I'd like it not to be in vain.

Edit: I have no other tangs. Only ended up with this one because he was starving to death at Petco.

 

[ngoodermuth]

I’m very sorry about your loss

I had a wrasse spook once while I was moving things around in the tank. He dove right into a rock and instantly went stiff. He died a few minutes after, it was pretty traumatic to witness.

 

[Salty Lemon]

If people would like, I can take some pictures for future reference to help others.

First of all, I'm so sorry this happened. That is rough and I'm guessing you felt helpless. ;Sorry
Second, while I am far from one of the emergency fish health experts on this form, I would appreciate a photo if you have it. It would be good to take a look at from an educational perspective. ;Bookworm

 

[4FordFamily]

Honestly if bleeding out of lateral line I’m guessing it had severe HLLE.

But actually I’ve had tangs randomly seize and die on the spot or exhibit symptoms you describe. Generally, this is within the first few months.

They generally end up dying, I had a PBT that did this three times before dying suddenly after the third. It seemed to recover the first two times.

It’s hard to say what causes it, bad collection methods, internal organ damage, etc. IME it happened more frequently after feedings, which I’ve always found odd.

Sorry for your loss.

 

[erk]

Honestly if bleeding out of lateral line I’m guessing it had severe HLLE.

But actually I’ve had tangs randomly seize and die on the spot or exhibit symptoms you describe. Generally, this is within the first few months.

They generally end up dying, I had a PBT that did this three times before dying suddenly after the third. It seemed to recover the first two times.

It’s hard to say what causes it, bad collection methods, internal organ damage, etc. IME it happened more frequently after feedings, which I’ve always found odd.

Sorry for your loss.

I've seen HLLE, my tang didn't have any visible signs. I've had this tang for at least a year if not longer. The incident happened in the middle of the night since the tang was out and about the past evening. I'm thinking something spooked the tang. I say this because of all damage I observed this morning. Frags thrown about, etc. He has a cave he sleeps in every night. We've been having pretty nasty thunderstorms rolling thru since last night and at one point I woke up to some crazy loud thunder. I'm wondering if maybe that spooked the tang into dashing into the rock work.

The tang that passed is the same as the one in my avatar image. I also have many photos of it on my tank thread. You can see it was very healthy.

I'm getting new tires put on my truck right now. When I get home, I'll take some images to document the damage to the tang.

 

[gobble]

I think I just witnessed something similar. I'm sitting at my desk and caught a glimpse of a firefish darting through the tank up into the screen top and back into the tank, followed by him zooming back and forth in the tank running into rocks, corals and the glass. After that he spent a few minutes swimming upside down and rolling around and coming to rest under the glass cleaner magnet I have in the back corner. The flame angel started swimming next to him wondering what was going on. I ran downstairs to grab a net and it appears to be swimming normally now. Very strange.

 

[erk]

I think I just witnessed something similar. I'm sitting at my desk and caught a glimpse of a firefish darting through the tank up into the screen top and back into the tank, followed by him zooming back and forth in the tank running into rocks, corals and the glass. After that he spent a few minutes swimming upside down and rolling around and coming to rest under the glass cleaner magnet I have in the back corner. The flame angel started swimming next to him wondering what was going on. I ran downstairs to grab a net and it appears to be swimming normally now. Very strange.

Yeah, I've seen that with wrasses and firefish as well. Maybe the decreased body mass means they are less likely to inflict damage to themselves? I was at my LFS today and described to the manager what happened. He wasn't surprised. He said he's seen this before. He once had it where a hermit grabbed the tail of a large fish in his personal tank and that caused the fish to zip around the tank running into everything.

Took some images of the tang. Will upload them shortly.

 

[living_tribunal]

I’m very sorry about your loss

I had a wrasse spook once while I was moving things around in the tank. He dove right into a rock and instantly went stiff. He died a few minutes after, it was pretty traumatic to witness.

I believe this just happened to me :/

I just added a quarantined tomini tang. He’s been great and was fine as of four hours ago.

He’s been very shy and nervous around me since adding him a week ago. When I got home this evening and walked through the door, I noticed he moved real fast and then just struggled to swim at the top of the tank. He then hit a powerhead and passed away 30 minutes later.

He had no signs of disease and I think I would have seen at least something before I left a couple of hours ago.

I’ve never seen anything like this before :/