Please help--is my fish sick?

[mmarisca]

Hello all, I'm about 2.5 months in and everything has been going exceedingly well by all accounts. I got a Kole Tang about a month ago. I did not use a QT. In fact, my plans this week on my day off was to get that all started up because I didn't want to add another fish without one. In the last few days I've been noticing some faint white spots on my Kole Tang in morning. The picture attached isn't the best but I think you can make out what I'm talking about. The funny thing is that after a few hours with the lights on these faint spots seem to go away. His behavior seems fine, is eating good, but every morning I wake up thinking he's in rough shape.

I did a water change yesterday thinking that would help. Should I set my QT up with water from my tank and medicate him just in case? This is my first experience with sickness in saltwater and have read a number of threads on the site about it but really could use some guidance. Thanks.

[Sams Reef]

Water changes won't help the sickness. From the pic I'd say its ich. Set up a qt and treat the fish with either copper or hyposalinity. Read the threads in Fish Disease Treatment. Let the main tank go fallow for 72 days. Good Luck. As my signature says I'm running fallow too.

[3FordFamily]

Yup it's ich and she's very far gone. No chance of this fish kicking it without aggressive copper treatment. Get hospital tank and cupramine/copper asap. Do 1.5-2x dose on bottle

[3FordFamily]

Everyone tells me how hardy kole tangs are, but seriously I have not been able to keep one alive. I've tried twice. Both from divers den.

I can keep powder blue and achilles tangs. I do not qt but have hospital tank when the local ich in my tank does take over a fish- when they survive treatment they slowly build an immunity. My dt all three have ich but the residents are unaffected.

Anyway, mine have not made it and succumb easier than any tang I've tried. My pacific blues I have tried have lived 3-4x as long. One recently died after a tank move but I think it was stress. Very sad.

Left untreated, ich takes 1-2 weeks to kill off achilles and powder blue tangs (some of the most fragile tangs in the hobby especially achilles) but kole are gone in 2-3 days after symptoms. I would say yours has less than 24 hours to live.

My hippo I've had for about 1.5 years will
Show ich when stressed and get VERY bad (looking like the one above) but always kicks it. Takes her 2-3 days to recover from bad infestations. She's tough as nails. All 3 times it's taken her over was when I moved her from a 54 corner (when she was a tiny baby) to a 125, when I first got her, and again when I moved her to the 180 she is in now. She looked horrible but went from what you see in your kole to A1 in literally 3 days.

I would NOT count on that happening with your fish. It's vert, very dire and this hippo is the only tang I've ever had to survive an infestation that bad. Even with treatment, I would say that fish has a 25-33% chance of survival.

[mmarisca]

Thanks for feedback. Should I just get rid of him altogether and start with a fresh QT tank? One question I have though is why do the symptoms go away during the day? If I showed you a picture of him now you'd say he looks normal. When i have encountered ich in freshwater it never goes away visually.

[sarens]

yes try a QT for him, do you have any other fish in the tank? If so odds are your tank/fish now has ich, unfortunatly I live with this also, currently I am removing all of the fish from my tank, going to put them in a QT and leave my tank fallow for 6-10 weeks, read all of this and more to get education you will want/need

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1990809

[snorvich]

May be ich, but looks more like brook to me. Picture is not clear enough for certainty.

[Dmorty217]

May be ich, but looks more like brook to me. Picture is not clear enough for certainty.

Agree. Ich spots aren't nearly that large on fish when they do show signs of it. You will notice the fish "appear" to get better every 3 days when the ich cysts fall off