Powder Blue Tang Disease

Rickyrooz · Mar 3, 2011

My Powder Blue Tang contracted this clear film on the side of its body yesterday and later on it turned a little brown. This morning I woke up to a dead tang and it looked like there were patches of internal bleeding. Does anyone know what the tang could have contracted? I received it last week from Live Aquaria and it has been in a 40 gallon breeder as a quarantine tank.

Rickyrooz · Mar 4, 2011

Here is Live Aquaria's reply to the picture I sent.
"Thank you for your reply. We sincerely apologize for the loss of the Powder Blue Tang. After doing some research we feel the cause of your Tangs death was Skin Hemorrhage, which is mostly caused by water quality and stress. We ask you to please email us back with your water parameters just to make sure there is no issue there. Once we have this information available we will be able to assist you further in this matter. Thank you for choosing Drs. Foster & Smith LiveAquaria for your live aquatic needs. You are a valued customer and we look forward to hearing from you in the future."

My parameters were as follows.
pH -8.2 (API Test Kit)
Temp. - 75
Salinity - 1.025 (Refractometer)
Ammonia - 0 (API Test Kit)
Nitrite - 0 (API Test Kit)
Nitrate - 0 (API Test Kit)

nixer · Mar 4, 2011

Marine Fish Diseases and Parasites

Anthony Calfo · Mar 4, 2011

Hemorrhagic septicemia is very commonly expressed in tangs, angels and butterflies that are recently imported. The infection spreads in central filtration systems. Stress of import to Live Aquaria, stress or shipping to you and/or stress of your water quality (bad or just different enough from theirs) can trip this to occur.

Distributors and wholesalers see this regularly and have been doing so since the very beginning of importing marine fishes in qty many decades ago. I wonder and worry that your tang was not first acclimated to a QT tank? The concern is exposing your other display fishes to the infection.

The onus and obligation to control situations like this is completely on us as fishkeepers to Qt all new arrivals. no exceptions, my friend.

Rickyrooz · Mar 4, 2011

Anthony Calfo said:
Hemorrhagic septicemia is very commonly expressed in tangs, angels and butterflies that are recently imported. The infection spreads in central filtration systems. Stress of import to Live Aquaria, stress or shipping to you and/or stress of your water quality (bad or just different enough from theirs) can trip this to occur.

Distributors and wholesalers see this regularly and have been doing so since the very beginning of importing marine fishes in qty many decades ago. I wonder and worry that your tang was not first acclimated to a QT tank? The concern is exposing your other display fishes to the infection.

The onus and obligation to control situations like this is completely on us as fishkeepers to Qt all new arrivals. no exceptions, my friend.

As stated in my original post I have all of my Live Aquaria fish in a 40 gallon breeder set up as a QT. They will be transferred into a larger display tank after they look healthy and are disease free.

Anthony Calfo · Mar 4, 2011

My apologies, Rick. I read too fast indeed. My habit in posting too is to think of broader readership and archiving (speaking to newbies especially so they read and hopefully reread fundamentals that help in time).

With regard for your other fishes in QT, hemorrhagic septicemia spreads like wildfire. Usually knocking out certain whole families of fishes while others seem unaffected (but still carry). If you have any tangs, angels or butterflies especially in your display...make sure all exposed present Qt fishes do not make it to the display for about 8 weeks (the rule is bare minimum of 30 days of symptom free living in QT, but after this you will want to play it safe with a longer stay and more water changes in the QT to reduce risk of spreading). cheers

Rickyrooz · Mar 4, 2011

Anthony, do you believe adding Pimafix to the QT will be beneficial in the meantime? It is suppose to be a natural bacterial treatment.

hawkfishman · Mar 4, 2011

don't fault yourself 7 out of 10 collected die with in months

Monroereef · Mar 4, 2011

One of the hard ones to keep. I tried twice and have not been able to keep them alive for more than a few months. However, believe it or not, I have had better luck with Achillies Tang :wink:

Sunny

Anthony Calfo · Mar 11, 2011

Rickyrooz...I haven't used Pimafix. No input yet to add on that product.

defalkner · Sep 8, 2011

Powder blue died this afternoon with similar issue

I had what seemed as a healthy powder blue until last night. The tang is only 4 weeks old was eating it's algae, seaweed and brine. It swam a lot and seemed fine - but it had this twitch it would do over the last couple weeks. I never thought much of it until I saw what looked like ich on it 2 days ago. Anywase I went to school this morning and came back and the tang was laying on the ground just barely breathing. I put her in the refugium (my safe house) and helped her stay upright and massaged her a bit to keep her going.

I noticed the SAME lesions/wear spots on side, as your powder blue, mine are on both sides and identical. What is this? There's no competition in my tank. Only a few other stupid little damsels. the photo I took was about 6 hours after death and the fin rot was not there originally (I think this is post mortality decay). After death the darker patch around the wear spots became visible. I referenced the disease link and so forth and the closest problem I can associate with this is a bacterial infection that cause the skin hemorrhage.

My water parameters are flawless, and I do water changes every 2 weeks. I use API reef masters test kit and all my inverts are thriving. The other fish seem to always be fine. Are Tang's just extra sensitive? It looked like there may have been some fungal issue too.