Anything we can do to help our yellow tang after a temperature drop?

[CampAquarium]

Overnight, something went wrong with our aquarium heaters/controllers, and the temperature of the tank must have dropped. We don't know how low, or for how long... we just woke up to the controller beeping and an error message, and only one of the heating coils working. The temp was at 76.3, but everything in the tank tells us it must have gotten lower than that at some point during the night. We reset the controller and got them all running again, and were back up to a normal temp within the hour.

Sadly, our hawkfish had already died. And our yellow tang is struggling really badly. When we found it this morning, it was laying on the sand, breathing rapidly. We got it into an acclimation box, and tried to make everything less stressful for it.... turned down the lights, increased skimming and surface agitation for more oxygen.

But it's still just lying there on its side, moving one fin and breathing very hard. Once in a while it will flit around the box, but it looks like it can't control its movements well. Is there anything else we can do to help it possibly make it through? We realize we may be out of luck at this point.

 

[musel101]

Leave them alone and stop adjusting the temperature. He will get better in time in my opinion.

 

[o2manyfish]

A temp drop of a few degrees isn't going to hurt anyone. During the summer my 1500g system swings as much as 4-6 degrees every 24 hours following the sun's appearance and setting. And that causes 0 issues.

Twice in the past 8 weeks we've had a heater failure (240v 3500w Titanium Heater) overnight. There are dual heaters on the system but of course the failures happened during our coldest days. Which for Los Angeles were nights that dropped to the low 40's.

750g of my 1500g is outside. By the time I was aware of the issue the following morning the whole system had droppeed to 65 degrees. Fixing the heater and letting it raise the temp back up over a 4 hour period.

The corals were a lil ***** for a few days. The fish were fine. After it happend the 2nd time I saw a few ick spots on the Naoko wrasse and a Venustus angel. But those were gone after a few days. With other more sensitive fish like Achilles Tang, Blue Tangs, Powder Blue Tang, Imperator Angel, Goldflake Angel(s), copperband and 25+ baby clown fish - there were no other fish. By the afternoon of the day of the heater failure when I fed the system the fish were all eating happily and healthily and you would never have known the temp had dropped.

If your system only dropped 5 or 6 degrees to mid 70's - then you have another issue at play not a temp drop. Is it possible the power was out to the tank and not only did the temp drop but there was no water movement for an extended period of time?

Dave B

 

[Jekyl]

Agree with above that the issues may not be related to the temp. Mine fluctuates more than that during water changes which is a much faster swing.