New help with blue tang asap

[RyanPayne]

ok so i have a blue tang that i have had for about 2 weeks now and after about 10 days i noticed white spots on the fish which i believe to be ich,
he was still swimming around fine and eating frozen mysis and flakes,

Until tonight when he's started hanging around my coral banded shrimp and the shrimp seems to be cleaning it i guess but he won't leave my shrimp alone and the shrimp looks like he's getting ****ed off as he moves away and almost nips the tang and I'm getting kinda worried,
i tried feeding him before and he ended up eating a few flakes

i have him in a 55 gallon tank, with a yellow tang, 2 clowns, coral banded shrimp and a yellow tail damsel

i have a tunze powerhead which provides a good flow but i read that it may pay of to have abit a tube providing medium sized air bubbles to add more oxygen to the tank... is this a good idea?

everything else in the tank seems to be fine although the yellow tang seems to be hanging around in the same spot today

all help is very appreciated

[CuzzA]

At this point all of your fish are compromised and the only way to eliminate the ick is to remove the fish for qt and fallow the tank for a couple months.

Removing the fish will at least likely further stress the hippo tang to death so here's what I would do. Stop feeding flakes and offer up some real frozen food. Mysis shrimp, nori, fish eggs, etc. I would feed 3 times a day. The reason being is you want to try and boost the fish's energy level and immune system to be able and fight off the ick.

In the meantime and if they should survive I would sell the hippo tang and probably the yellow too. (Let the buyer know they have ick) Those two fish have no business being in a 55 gallon tank. Call me the tang police if you want, but the fact of the matter is that hippo is going to get ~12" long, the same width of your tank. It will eventually die.

Once you have relocated the tangs you can qt the 2 clowns and damsel and fallow the tank. Going forward you should research your intended fish purchases and match the appropriate species with the size of your tank. Always qt new fish additions.

Good luck. I hope the fish survive.

[dweber618]

At this point all of your fish are compromised and the only way to eliminate the ick is to remove the fish for qt and fallow the tank for a couple months.

Removing the fish will at least likely further stress the hippo tang to death so here's what I would do. Stop feeding flakes and offer up some real frozen food. Mysis shrimp, nori, fish eggs, etc. I would feed 3 times a day. The reason being is you want to try and boost the fish's energy level and immune system to be able and fight off the ick.

In the meantime and if they should survive I would sell the hippo tang and probably the yellow too. (Let the buyer know they have ick) Those two fish have no business being in a 55 gallon tank. Call me the tang police if you want, but the fact of the matter is that hippo is going to get ~12" long, the same width of your tank. It will eventually die.

Once you have relocated the tangs you can qt the 2 clowns and damsel and fallow the tank. Going forward you should research your intended fish purchases and match the appropriate species with the size of your tank. Always qt new fish additions.

Good luck. I hope the fish survive.

+1 your hippo looks really bad, and both tangs need bigger tanks. Fallow period for the ich life cycle to die out takes min 72 days (I went 90 to be safe). Don't add anything wet during fallow period or it can compromise the success of your fallow period.

[Justintegra]

Sadly all of this is correct, though I wonder with how prevalent the spotting is on the blue tang there is a chance it could be velvet and not ich. Either way, same result for the most part.

Six months ago I introduced a Kole tang to my 29g biocube, and it was the worst mistake of my reefing life. within two days he showed signs of ich, then all of my other fish except for my leopard wrasse did as well. I tried to fight it with additives, etc. Nothing worked. My two clowns and the wrasse all went through TTM. I lost one clown that got trapped in-between the heater and the wall in one of the transfer tanks for too long, but the wrasse and other clown survived. Lost everything else. They are in quarantine along with a new clown to replace the old one and will go back into the display the second week of April (72 day fallow will be over).

Long story short, don't get a yellow or Kole tang unless you have a 75g tank, and don't get a blue unless you are over 100g. They just can't take the stress of the smaller tanks and will cause an event. I took too long trying to fight it before I just accepted it and moved on to restarting, salvaging the fish I could.

1.) Get all of the fish out of there
2.) all fish EXCEPT the two tangs should IMMEDIATLY start TTM
3.) two tangs should be quarantined and overfed to try to save them, but get them out of the tank so you start the fallow period. You will very likely lose that blue tang; we haven't seen the yellow.
4.) get a bigger tank, or sell the tangs to a qualified new owner.
5.) after TTM for the other fish, quarantine them for 72 days out of the display tank system
6.) do not add ANYTHING to the display tank in this time period.

[hkgar]

Tank size for tangs.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1946079

Please, please do your research before moving forward.

[Justintegra]

I think people most often (not assuming about this guy, but in general) assume that the size recommendations are for aggression issues. For some species, that's true, unfortunately for tangs that is not true. They really need the space to cope with the stress of captivity. They are just extremely adverse to these small closed environments. Either they die from the stress, or they die from ich when the stress decimates their immune system.

[RyanPayne]

Just to be clear,
I asked all the questions that needed to be answered to my local fish shop and they advised me that i would have no problems with my tank size,
I guess they just wanted a sale... In future i will not be taking any advice from this shop and i will be doing all my research online thoroughly

Thank you all for your help

[hkgar]

You are welcome.

I just wish LFS owners would be more concerned with honest and truthful advise and less about selling a product. What kind of enthusiast would sell a fish into a tank where that fish had little chance to thrive. It makes no sense. And now he has lost a future customer.

When you are a newbie, you put your trust in someone you think has your, and the livestocks, best interest at heart. No shame in that Ryan.

[Justintegra]

You are welcome.

I just wish LFS owners would be more concerned with honest and truthful advise and less about selling a product. What kind of enthusiast would sell a fish into a tank where that fish had little chance to thrive. It makes no sense. And now he has lost a future customer.

When you are a newbie, you put your trust in someone you think has your, and the livestocks, best interest at heart. No shame in that Ryan.

The fish store will likely not lose the customer, sadly. Many areas there simply just isn't competition for reef stores. The will convince the consumer that this just happens, etc. I live in the South Bend, IN area. decent size population area and home of Notre Dame, and I have to drive an hour to find a decent reef store to Fort Wayne or Merryville. Those two places have quality product, but even they give out sometimes horrible advise. It's just not a marketplace ripe for customer who do not have the motivation to educate themselves separately from what "their guy" at the fish store tell them.

This is a conversation I just had with my brother-in-law that "his guy" really either doesn't know his *** from a whole in the ground, or really doesn't care about you or the fish he is selling you.

[RyanPayne]

You are welcome.

I just wish LFS owners would be more concerned with honest and truthful advise and less about selling a product. What kind of enthusiast would sell a fish into a tank where that fish had little chance to thrive. It makes no sense. And now he has lost a future customer.

When you are a newbie, you put your trust in someone you think has your, and the livestocks, best interest at heart. No shame in that Ryan.
It just upsets me as i love fish and im so hooked on the hobby now, i think its an art in a way

They have definetly lost a customer and i have found a new shop which are extremely helpful and from here on out im researching everything thoroughly before purchasing anything,
Thanks again for your help and understanding that im not one of those people who dont care about the fish and im actually in this hobby to see them thrive,

Smaller fish that are suitable for my tank will only be added now

Thanks,
Ryan

[Dkuhlmann]

Ryan, the best thing you can do is research the fish you want, make a list of them and the order in which to add them. This is usually from least aggressive to most aggressive. If you come across a new "must have" fish then see if it figures into your plan of your tank.

[ClownFishGuy6]

Take out all your fish and put them all in a quarintine tank. He's COVERED in ich. Once there's no fish in it wait 72 days until you put them back in your tank

[3dees]

those tangs or any tang do not belong in that tank. lfs are there to make money. you buy the wrong fish, it dies, you buy another. win win for the lfs. the fault is ours. we should never add anything to a tank, fresh or salt, before researching. I would think that an employee might get into trouble if the owner finds out they lost a 100.00 sale because the customer was told it was the wrong fish for their tank. yeah, that would be the right thing to do, but I'm just looking at it realistically.

[hkgar]

We do live in a free market society and there are two often expressed principles:
The customer is always right. "he wants to buy that fish, who am I to say no". Now if the customer asks then only a shyster doesn't tell the truth.

Let the buyer beware. It is the responsibility of ALL buyers to do the research so as to bring knowledge to the marketplace. Without buyer knowledge the marketplace will not work as intended, but it is the fault of the buyers, not the market or the sellers.

[heathlindner25]

There's no better advice then to do all of your own research, all of these animals are a simple Google search away

[Marchillo]

I'm not a fan of criticizing a newbie when starting out in the hobby and getting bad advice from a LFS. I personally always had this naive perception that pet store people care a lot about animals. Obviously this is true in some cases and not in others. I got some bad advice from a lfs in purchasing an Atlantic blue tang. I told them my tank size (40g at the time) and told them I wanted a fish that was not going to outgrow that sized tank. Once I discovered this site and other things I learned that not all lfs will give good advice. I returned the tang for some cuc and haven't bought a fish from there since.

To the OP - this is a very good site for research and if you want a quick and dirty tank size requirement list check out liveaquaria. It's not perfect but I find it to be pretty good. I usually compare their recommendations to one or two other sources.

Good luck!

[thelawnwrangler]

I'm not a fan of criticizing a newbie when starting out in the hobby and getting bad advice from a LFS. I personally always had this naive perception that pet store people care a lot about animals. Obviously this is true in some cases and not in others. I got some bad advice from a lfs in purchasing an Atlantic blue tang. I told them my tank size (40g at the time) and told them I wanted a fish that was not going to outgrow that sized tank. Once I discovered this site and other things I learned that not all lfs will give good advice. I returned the tang for some cuc and haven't bought a fish from there since.

To the OP - this is a very good site for research and if you want a quick and dirty tank size requirement list check out liveaquaria. It's not perfect but I find it to be pretty good. I usually compare their recommendations to one or two other sources.

Good luck!
I agree with this- When I was a kid there was no internet (I didn't have to walk to school lol). I had a good LFS and I asked that poor guy 30 minutes of questions before I would buy a $2 molly or gasp spend the extra buck for a tiger barber. Maybe even go a whole $5 for a little catfish.

I always assumed well they can keep fish alive and have a functioning business they know the way.

[Moray26]

For my blue tang when he got ich. I started feeding mysis shrimp which was soaked in garlic. Never have seen ich since.

[CStrickland]

I'm not a fan of criticizing a newbie when starting out in the hobby and getting bad advice from a LFS. I personally always had this naive perception that pet store people care a lot about animals. Obviously this is true in some cases and not in others.
+1
This thread isn't so bad, but people do get fired up sometimes. It's not just lfs either, you can find websites that say a yellow tang is fine in a 30g. It's awfully hard to start on the right foot in this hobby when there's so much conflicting info. I'm always glad to see a new reefer "get it" after the first mistake, it's tempting to get defensive.

[gone fishin]

I'm not a fan of criticizing a newbie when starting out in the hobby and getting bad advice from a LFS. I personally always had this naive perception that pet store people care a lot about animals. Obviously this is true in some cases and not in others. I got some bad advice from a lfs in purchasing an Atlantic blue tang. I told them my tank size (40g at the time) and told them I wanted a fish that was not going to outgrow that sized tank. Once I discovered this site and other things I learned that not all lfs will give good advice. I returned the tang for some cuc and haven't bought a fish from there since.

To the OP - this is a very good site for research and if you want a quick and dirty tank size requirement list check out liveaquaria. It's not perfect but I find it to be pretty good. I usually compare their recommendations to one or two other sources.

Good luck!


I agree, we have all got some bad advice from the LFS and made mistakes early on. The key is to learn from those mistakes and move on.