YELLOW TANG IS KILLING ITSELF!! PLEASE HELP!!

[tanglady]

my yellow tang is slowly starving itself and is completely unresponsive to its surroundings. I just put it in qt with a sufficient amount of food. He contracted ich a few days after he stopped eating. He is about 2.5 inches long. He ignores all food. All my other fish are doing good. What am i doing wrong???

 

[Albertan22]

He may not be eating because of the ich. The stage that you can see on the fish isn’t the start of the ich cycle but rather the late stages of it. That said. What are you feeding? Are you offering nori? Have you tried soaking food in garlic?

 

[Jason Mcdowell]

Sorry to hear bud. I’ve had ich and it is a complete pain . I’ve installed a uv sterilizer on the tank and it solved it in matter of couple days. Do you use frozen mysis at all? My tangs go crazy for that. And I supplement hakai herbivore pellets and nori sheets. Try many different foods to see. Sometimes it just happens.

 

[KrisReef]

Was the stomach always sunken in? It kind of looks like a fish caught using cyanide. Their stomachs are gone and they won't eat anything. I hope he pulls through.

#reefsquad

 

[tanglady]

He may not be eating because of the ich. The stage that you can see on the fish isn’t the start of the ich cycle but rather the late stages of it. That said. What are you feeding? Are you offering nori? Have you tried soaking food in garlic?

Yes I have tried mysis, krill, pellets, clams and nori. He won’t touch any of it. He completely ignores all food and doesn’t seem to care about what is happening around him. He got the ich after he stopped eating. I’ve been treating him with ich x. Some of my other fish had a few white dots but he kept on getting more. All of my other fish are ich free now. He keeps on getting worse even tho I am giving him meds. I have also been giving him vitachem which I think is keeping him alive.

 

[tanglady]

Was the stomach always sunken in? It kind of looks like a fish caught using cyanide. Their stomachs are gone and they won't eat anything. I hope he pulls through.

I was reading about cyanide. I hope that’s not the case. He was a skinny fish when I got him because I didn’t know any better. Now he is just paper thin and is almost transparent.

 

[tanglady]

Sorry to hear bud. I’ve had ich and it is a complete pain . I’ve installed a uv sterilizer on the tank and it solved it in matter of couple days. Do you use frozen mysis at all? My tangs go crazy for that. And I supplement hakai herbivore pellets and nori sheets. Try many different foods to see. Sometimes it just happens.

I’ve tried everything. Mysis, nori, krill, clams, pellets. He was eating when I first got him, or it seems like he was not about a week ago he started ignoring the food and swimming around without paying attention to what is going on around him.

 

[Albertan22]

Tangs always seem to get hit by ich harder than others. Fish have ich a week or two before the spots appear, the spots are the parasite exiting their body after they’ve done the damage. It sounds like you are doing the best you can. You may be very well dealing cyanide or just a really sick fish. You could set up a QT and try copper but he looks weak and pretty far gone, I’m not sure he’d survive it.

 

[tanglady]

Tangs always seem to get hit by ich harder than others. Fish have ich a week or two before the spots appear, the spots are the parasite exiting their body after they’ve done the damage. It sounds like you are doing the best you can. You may be very well dealing cyanide or just a really sick fish. You could set up a QT and try copper but he looks weak and pretty far gone, I’m not sure he’d survive it.

What should I do? Should I try to give him back? It’s been a month. Or should I just let him love out his last days in qt?

 

[Jason Mcdowell]

I’ve tried everything. Mysis, nori, krill, clams, pellets. He was eating when I first got him, or it seems like he was not about a week ago he started ignoring the food and swimming around without paying attention to what is going on around him.

check your parameters. And give him the best environment humanly possible. It may be stress from the ich larve and ich adult stages. If you don’t have any corals add PraziPro in the tank. If you do have corals quarantine all your fish fist, And treat all. I’ve used it, and worked. I have a bottle of it standby(just in case).

 

[nereefpat]

I’ve been treating him with ich x.

Better methods are needed. I would do copper, or chloroquine (if you can get it), or tank transfer method. Unfortunately, this won't help with the eating.

Good luck.

 

[ReefGeezer]

The skinniness could be from intestinal worms. Once weakened, the ich got a foothold. Prazipro might help if it's not already too late. For future reference, make it a rule not to buy any fish that is not fat and happy. I look for muscle mass above the lateral line and right behind the top of the gill plate and a big fat belly. Any pinching or hollowness in those areas makes me leave it at the LFS. I have to skip buying a lot of fish, but at least I have a better chance of getting a healthy one.

 

[Zionas]

Cyanide caught? I thought these guys are all from Hawaii!

Next time make it a rule to only buy fish that are plump and eating well at the LFS. What was the color of the Yellow Tang when you saw it at your LFS? You have to make sure its color is a deep, vibrant and striking yellow, if it looks even a bit pale, give it a pass.- Bob Fenner’s advice

Under normal circumstances they’re disease resistant fish and I’ve heard of them surviving tank wipeouts.

 

[tanglady]

Better methods are needed. I would do copper, or chloroquine (if you can get it), or tank transfer method. Unfortunately, this won't help with the eating.

Good luck.

Thank you. Unfortunately he passes away last night

 

[tanglady]

Cyanide caught? I thought these guys are all from Hawaii!

Next time make it a rule to only buy fish that are plump and eating well at the LFS. What was the color of the Yellow Tang when you saw it at your LFS? You have to make sure its color is a deep, vibrant and striking yellow, if it looks even a bit pale, give it a pass.- Bob Fenner’s advice

Under normal circumstances they’re disease resistant fish and I’ve heard of them surviving tank wipeouts.

I wish that was the case. He passed away last night. I don’t know what went wrong.

 

[tanglady]

The skinniness could be from intestinal worms. Once weakened, the ich got a foothold. Prazipro might help if it's not already too late. For future reference, make it a rule not to buy any fish that is not fat and happy. I look for muscle mass above the lateral line and right behind the top of the gill plate and a big fat belly. Any pinching or hollowness in those areas makes me leave it at the LFS. I have to skip buying a lot of fish, but at least I have a better chance of getting a healthy one.

Thank you for the advice. I will keep it in mind next time I purchase a fish.