Yellow Tang Woes

[MarkMcG]

Our Yellow Tang is not looking well. Beautiful when we bought it in September 2017. Behaves normally, not bothered by any tankmates. We feed him seaweed from a clip but he does gobble up meaty foods when we feed the carnivores. We try to keep a low nutrient tank with No3Po4X and high quality Carbon/GFO. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Martin Riggs]

Try a garlic soak

 

[Sunny]

Unfortunately, I believe she is on her way out. Tangs main diet is seaweed - veg stuff. They do go after the meaty frozen stuff but that is like fast food for them. They need veg diet every day and maybe a snack of frozen at times. Was she ever eating seaweed, pellets, flakes? Looking at her fins she has already lost a chunk - looks like HLLE to me.

Good luck.

 

[myrjon]

I found out the hard way. Tangs need sea weed like Sunny stated..

 

[Humblefish]

Looks like HLLE to me as well: HLLE (Head & Lateral Line Erosion)

You can reverse it (somewhat) be feeding nori and vitamin enriched foods, but he will most likely never look 100% "normal".

If you haven't done so already, I would check for stray voltage in the water just to rule that out as a possible cause.

 

[Trigger Tough]

1. Stop using carbon immediately. Some studies say it causes HLLE

2. Feed LRS herbivore formula soaked with Selcon and a garlic supplement. I use Brightwell Aquatics Garlic Power

 

[Jeremy Brito]

My yellow tang is on a diet or nori and LRS reef frenzy (the one with veggies in the mix) I've noticed he eats his nori in healthy portions but seems to go after meaty foods like the chunky seafood bits in reef frenzy and the brine\myisis shrimp I feed. He will also eat these spectrum pellet food I feed regularly, he has a good healthy appetite.
I've always wondered if it was a health concern that he eats as much meaty foods as he does because a lot of information on range has them listed as herbavores.

 

[Hawkeye]

The clip doesn't always work. I have a powder brown tang that refused to eat nori from a clip. I ended up using garlic infused nori, but wrapped it with a rubberband on some live rock rubble. Leave it in the tank and replaced as needed. Bottom line the tang recognized the nori as food, and I eventually stopped using the rubber band trick. (Now the fish eats greedily off a clip). Anyways I want to claim credit but I think Wil from AO suggested this method. I use Ocean Nutrition brand with Garlic Extract. The stuff smells so good...my wife thought I was hiding food...lol.

 

[Jeremy Brito]

Hawkeye I use the same stuff and yes it smells delicious the previous brand was just the kelp an no additives and it used to make me gag