Cole Tang Issue
 

My apologies, this is posted in a build thread, but I thought I might get a better response if I posted it separately.

My Cole Tang, while appearing otherwise healthy and eating like a pig, has started to lose color on his face. It doesn't really look line "Hole-in-the Head", it just looks like he's scraping the color off of his face. He does swim very quickly in & out and around the rocks and I suppose he could be crashing into them, but I really don't know what's going on. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance for the advice.

It is probably early stages of head and lateral line erosion. It starts with color loss and lateral line becoming more "visible". Here are some pictures of early stages;

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-0...lueTang2sm.jpg


https://forums.saltwaterfish.com/ind...-tang-jpg.118/

https://forums.saltwaterfish.com/ind...hippo-jpg.126/

It is normally not very common in Ctenochaetus tangs.

Yea... that looks like what's going on. Thanks. Ha anyone ever really figured the cause/treatment?

OK, did some light reading... The GAC reactor is gone as soon as I get home. It's not really necessary anyway. I was just using it for water polishing. Hopefully that will turn the tide. Maybe a big water change this weekend.

Activated Carbon has been linked to HLLE, stray voltage, poor nutrition, high nitrates, not enough algae being fed, stress. Start feeding more algae and soak your foods in vitachem. This may help.

No nitrates, tank is grounded, GAC will be gone.

I can't get that Tang to eat Nori or anything in sheet form. He gets some algae from grazing constantly but there isn't much in the tank. He won't eat wafers either. He'll eat flakes so I've been feeding the herbivore version. I also feed Brine & Mysis which he loves. I suppose I could soak those in Vitachem.

Are you using carbon in a reactor? I use carbon and have no issues but my carbon is a media bag that stays in the high flow area of the sump, it is not in a reactor.

Imo HLE is mostly a nutrition issue. You can try to feed nori to the tang by cutting it into flake sized pieces, soaking those in selcon (or vitachem) and feeding that like regular flake food. I am pretty sure it would gobble them up.

You dont need to use selcon every meal but once a week would really help (vitachem could be used even less). Also I would use omega one algae sheets for this since those are less fibrous than most other algea sheets and most fish can eat them more easily.

To be honest I never feed tangs or rabbitfish using algae clamps or pouches. For me it always caused aggression since all fish come close to each other and the most aggressive fish gets greedy and try to chase others away. It is normal since in nature most of these fish are pretty territorial about their grazing grounds. So using a scissor I cut the sheets into bite size squares, soak them in selcon or tank water for 5-10mins and feed that.

How long have you had your Kole Tang? Mine would not touch algae sheets for quite a few months and was very shy.

If you can't get him to eat sheets, keep feeding algae flakes and soak his food every once in awhile.

IMHO it usually is NOT nutrition related. I have seen this LLE in tanks being fed a wide variety of foods (nutritionally dense pellets, sheets of NORI style algae and mysis shrimp) From my experience it is almost always caused by high nitrates. I have struggled with it in the past and all my 'sensitive' fish each all the above like it is going out of style. Until I got my nitrates under control, the LLE will progress.

Just my experience. I did everything from stopping my activated carbon for a month (did nothing) then increased the # of feedings (did nothing) then released my nitrates were 50 PPM.

Once the nitrates were down under 10ppm from carbon dosing daily, all my fish showing LLE slowly began to heal; but it took over a month to get my nitrates into line...and several months for the fish to look healthy again.