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Sick Yellow Tang -- any thoughts?

Bruce Spiegelman

Bruce Spiegelman

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I took a lunch break after spending a couple hours cleaning the tank. Walked back into the room to see my yellow tang on the sand breathing fairly heavily. Eyes still follow me and she gets up every five minutes or so and rights herself before sinking back down.

No obvious marks on her, no distended stomach. All other fish are fine.

I did raise ALk fairly quickly from 9.5 to 10.25 before I upped my dosing pump a little, but I've done that many times without an effect, and certainly without a fish noticing.
Salt= 1.025
Alk 480
Mag 1175
Phos .01
Nitrates 25
Certainly not perfect parameters, but fine for my LPS tank, and nothing that should be bad for any fish.

I did check Ammonia and it does show slightly elevated levels (maybe .2). I say maybe because the only ammonia test I have is an old API for when I first set up a tank.
Perhaps I disturbed an ammonia pocket (although the deepest part of my sand is 1". ) I did brush off some rocks with no coral nearby, but again do that somewhat regularly.

I did toss some prime in after I saw her just in case as well. Luckily I had some here for the Discus tank.

I may have some Methylene Blue around here, but am hesitant to stress her out anymore without some other input first. I hate stressing Tangs.


Thoughts?
 

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Yea that sounds like some kind of toxicity reaction. Hopefully like Mike said just extra ammonia getting processed.
 
Chromis said:
Yea that sounds like some kind of toxicity reaction. Hopefully like Mike said just extra ammonia getting processed.
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I think so as well. She's not laying on the sand anymore. Still struggling a bit, but off the sand and upright. So weird. I did nothing different than usually and have a very shallow sand bed that gets clean often.
 
It’s possible tangs are more sensitive to toxic spills - I had a Salifert FWE treatment kill only my bristle tooth tang, whereas algae blenny and chromises didn’t eat for a day afterward but didn’t show any other symptoms. The symptoms my tang showed were similar.
 
Chromis said:
It’s possible tangs are more sensitive to toxic spills - I had a Salifert FWE treatment kill only my bristle tooth tang, whereas algae blenny and chromises didn’t eat for a day afterward but didn’t show any other symptoms. The symptoms my tang showed were similar.
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True, but there's other tangs in the tank as well including a Powder Blue who in general may be the most sensitive fish in the ocean ("fun fact": every Powder Blue in the ocean has a psychiatrist to help them cope.)

In any case, she's fine today. No lingering issues at all, and eating well. I suspect (no proof one way or the other) that perhaps I hit an ammonia pocket and she came over to investigate right after. The labored breathing would indicate the ammonia hurt her respiratory system, but it wore off over night. Maybe.....
 
yeah I ran flatworm exit on my tank and all fish were fine except sailfin tang which proceeded to float around the tank upside down, was fine a few hours later. Tangs more vulnerable to toxins maybe
 
Kremis said:
yeah I ran flatworm exit on my tank and all fish were fine except sailfin tang which proceeded to float around the tank upside down, was fine a few hours later. Tangs more vulnerable to toxins maybe
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Everybody's fine now. I'd toss some carbon in just the be sure, but Tangs don't even like that. :)
 
stay away from fine carbon, it pretty much equals hith in my book. glad to hear you're (the yellow tang) is through it though.
definitely strange since all you did was clean the tank - but hopefully you've learned something ? i usually look to learn something from each experience.
like did you clean the tank differently ? do more than you should have ? or just an anomoly ? fish/coral keeping ain't no joke.
fwiw cleaning the tank for me = wipe down the sides of the glass and change the filter floss, clean the skimmer (if i am even using one).
i never touch the sand and rocks, or biomedia.
cheers
 
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