Orange shoulder tang sick.

NathanJayC · Nov 10, 2014

Hi guys,
Recently (3 weeks ago) i bough 3 fish from a fish shop 3hrs from me, 7cm still juvi orange shoulder tang, 6cm melnurus wrasse and a yellow head sandsifter. Everything was fine and eating until about saturday when the wrasse randomly dropped dead, i have uploaded a pic of the half dead wrasse (now dead) to try ID why it died. I then noticed brown markings on the tang and he began to start acting weird, like twitching and a little bit of itching, am now worried. The brown markings are where the gut is on a both sides and also around different parts of the body, they are disappearing and appearing though. But the tang isn't acting fine still. He's still eating, both nori and frozen mussel etc. Thinking about fresh waterdip. Any idea on what it could be? Thanks!

Humblefish · Nov 10, 2014

The brown markings on the tang are a bacterial infection. It looks pretty nasty too (probably gram negative), so the fish's natural immune system may not be able to fight it off. I would QT, and treat with a broad spectrum antibiotic such as Furan-2 or Kanaplex. Or both together for maximum effectiveness.

The really bad news is a bacterial infection is often secondary in nature to a preexisting parasitic infestation, such as ich or flukes.

NathanJayC · Nov 10, 2014

Okay,Thanks heaps will look into it, will doing a fresh water dip do anything towards it? Will keep it updated. It's a shame, such a nice fish. Have seen other pictures of the same thing on Orange shoulder tangs.

leptang · Nov 10, 2014

Wrasse need a deep, enough sand bed to sleep in. if your sand bed isn't deep enough for the wrasse to hide in, it might of stressed out and died. Then your ammonia levels may of spiked and put stress on the tang lowering the tangs immune system. I cant tell by the photo if its because you may or not have a DSB and if that is the cause, it maybe a disease also.

Humblefish · Nov 10, 2014

NathanJayC said:
Okay,Thanks heaps will look into it, will doing a fresh water dip do anything towards it? Will keep it updated. It's a shame, such a nice fish. Have seen other pictures of the same thing on Orange shoulder tangs.

FW dip would confirm flukes and provide temporary relief. FW dip also provides some relief for marine velvet disease by clearing the gills. Whether or not it does the same for ich is debatable IMHO.

NathanJayC · Nov 10, 2014

leptang said:
Wrasse need a deep, enough sand bed to sleep in. if your sand bed isn't deep enough for the wrasse to hide in, it might of stressed out and died. Then your ammonia levels may of spiked and put stress on the tang lowering the tangs immune system. I cant tell by the photo if its because you may or not have a DSB and if that is the cause, it maybe a disease also.

Thanks for that. Was thinking along those lines too. So i added a container with a 1.5" sand bed for him while he was alive. Ammonia and nitrite are undetectable.

NathanJayC · Nov 11, 2014

Update: yesterday we did a 5 minute freshwater dip with methaline blue. The tang handelled being in the water surpisingly well. Put him back in the qt and he swam down fine. This morning found him dead on his side. Was found to be a suspected agressive Bacterial infection, the dead fish showed the markins much more and really bad. New lessons learned again.