A little background about myself and my tank. I always wanted to get into the hobby but my wife would not allow it until we had our basement refinished. Well that happened late last year so it was finally ok to get into the hobby. In February I purchased the tank a Red Sea Reefer 250 and let the fun begin. I found out the hard way where to buy fish but everything has been good for the past 4 months. So about a month ago I purchased a beautiful 4 inch Kole Eye Tang that had been quarantined for 30 days and had been there for 7 weeks. In the past week the tang started to have white spots on the pectoral fins and tail. The spots have not spread and none of the other fish have these white spots. The spots have not gotten worse and the tang is eating like a cow. The tang keeps looking for the chromis in the tank to clean him but it has not happened. I don't think it is ick but I honestly don't have any idea. I've tried to get a picture of the fish but he hides when I try to take a picture. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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Kole Eye tang with white spots
- Thread starter mshea
- Start date
First off welcome to the club! It's going to be tough to id a disease with out a picture but we can try to help. Do the "spots" look anything like this?
if so that would be lympho which usually isn't a big deal any many times will go away on its own with a good diet. I've heard it described as "fish herpes" before.
if so that would be lympho which usually isn't a big deal any many times will go away on its own with a good diet. I've heard it described as "fish herpes" before.
Like @kschweer said welcome to the club and also hard to id without a photo and even then its hard to id lol. Keep a close eye on him cause it could also be sand. I noticed my tangs pick up sand once in awhile and at first I thought it was ich but after taking a good close look I discovered it was sand.
Honestly, if he is eating well and it's been a few days he will get over it. Don't panic and set up a at, the stress will affect your fish. Just my experience, but I've had ich three times, first time and second time took out half my fish or more. I also pulled and q/Ted the fish. The third time I found spots, I left them alone in the tank, fed them well, and on the advice of a friend, I added 30ml of hydrogen peroxide one in the morning and once after lights out. His advice was once per day 30ml but I've dosed it in the past for other issues and was familiar with the effects, I was ok with a higher dose. Eventually the spots went away, and not one fish lost to it. I can't say the peroxide helped, or it was just from leaving them in the tank with a good diet, but its the first win against spots on the fish that I've had.
a tip a friend gave me but never tested it was to raise the temp slowly to 90. If I recall correctly the higher temp speeds up the life cycle and also prevents it from starting over. He said to raise the temp 1 degree every hour. Leave it at 90 for 10 days (and its important to go a the full 10 days even if you don't see any more spots) and then lower it 1 degree every hour until your back in your zone. Again I never tested this and was just advice from a fella fish keeper.
The biggest advice I can give you is not to do too many things at once and give it time to take affect.
The biggest advice I can give you is not to do too many things at once and give it time to take affect.
Your fish seems to have a fairly strong case of ich so it may or may not come out of it alive without intervention. The fish seems to be skinny too. If you decided not to treat it then improve the nutrition. Try getting some live blackworms and a variety of frozen food.
If you want to treat it TTM (tank transfer method) is not terribly difficult and many people (including myself) have used the method successfully.
Ich is not a death sentence for marine fish I hope your fish will come out ok.
If you want to treat it TTM (tank transfer method) is not terribly difficult and many people (including myself) have used the method successfully.
Ich is not a death sentence for marine fish I hope your fish will come out ok.
Unfortunately this doesn't work for saltwater ich, I believe it does for freshwater though.
Raising temp is for freshwater ick, does nothing for the saltwater variants.
Looks like art beat me should have read the thread first
Thanks guys. As I stated I never tried it myself. He might had been talking about fresh water tanks
Thanks for all of advice. The did a 30% percent water change this morning and I hoping it will clear up. I don't have access to another tank at this time to setup hospital tank or try the tank transfer method. I fed the tank this morning and tang eat like usual. I feed larrys reef frenzy and use a veggie clip for nori. Not going to make any large changes at this point to avoid stress on the fish.
Welcome!
I hate to break this to you - but while you need to be optimistic and hope for the best, you should be prepared for the worst case scenario - which would be all the fish get infected with ich.
There are a few things I would like to point out on your initial post.
#1. Chromis do not clean fish. The tang going to the chromis should not be construed as anything other than a fish going to bully a smaller one. Tangs like to set up an area of dominance just to show who's the boss.
#2. Ich is a 3 stage cycle - egg in the sand/gravel, parasite embedded in the fish, and briefly as a motile critter swimming in the water trying to find something to eat. The only surefire way to break the cycle is to run the tank without ANYTHING alive in there. But you can try as mentioned above to just feed the fish to boost nutrition in the hopes that they can build up their immune system to fend it off themselves.
I have never had ich in my 8 years with the 120 - knock on wood - but when i started in this hobby years ago - ich = certain death. A ten gallon tank with some PVC for hiding and a bubbler would make a simple QT that you might want to consider in the future. Treating a sick fish in a 10 gallon is a lot easier than a RSM250. The other thing to realize is that certain suppliers seem to get healthier fish. You pay more for that but in the end I've found far less incidence of disease.
I hate to break this to you - but while you need to be optimistic and hope for the best, you should be prepared for the worst case scenario - which would be all the fish get infected with ich.
There are a few things I would like to point out on your initial post.
#1. Chromis do not clean fish. The tang going to the chromis should not be construed as anything other than a fish going to bully a smaller one. Tangs like to set up an area of dominance just to show who's the boss.
#2. Ich is a 3 stage cycle - egg in the sand/gravel, parasite embedded in the fish, and briefly as a motile critter swimming in the water trying to find something to eat. The only surefire way to break the cycle is to run the tank without ANYTHING alive in there. But you can try as mentioned above to just feed the fish to boost nutrition in the hopes that they can build up their immune system to fend it off themselves.
I have never had ich in my 8 years with the 120 - knock on wood - but when i started in this hobby years ago - ich = certain death. A ten gallon tank with some PVC for hiding and a bubbler would make a simple QT that you might want to consider in the future. Treating a sick fish in a 10 gallon is a lot easier than a RSM250. The other thing to realize is that certain suppliers seem to get healthier fish. You pay more for that but in the end I've found far less incidence of disease.
So I lost the Tang this evening... I don't think I'm going to any new fish for a while at this point. I just don't want to continue to fail the fish. I'm now left with two clowns, coral angel, chromis and a cleaner wrasse. Hopefully they won't have any issues with ich but none of them have shown any sign of it so far.
I've had the cleaner wrasse for about a week. It was a foolish attempted to try to help the Tang. I actual hadn't seen the wrasse in 3 days until last I had to move all of the rock in the tank to get the fish out. On a side note the coral angel didn't it make I found him in the hospital tank this morning dead.
good luck man. hopefully you nip it in the butt. Now I never *knock on wood* had ich in my tanks. I have heard many people who had ich and I also read "The Salt Smart Guide to Preventing, Diagnosing, and Treating Disease" by Jay Hemdal. I'm sure you know but make sure you do the full treatment and not stop treatment once the white dots go away.