help!!!

[sharpblade15]

our cardinal fish is dying.

last night he ate fine and everything. but this morning we found him at the top of the tank almost gasping for air.
we did a fast water change and checked the tank and everything is fine.
everyone else is doing great.
he has a weird white pooplike thing comming out, its almost an inch long, it looks weird.
now he is at the bottom of the tank, and looks like hes about to fall over.
our stupid tang keeps bothering him.

any help

 

[kevin2000]

Basic info about the tank may help. How big is the tank, how old, how many and what kind of fish, how long has this fish been in the tank, when was the last fish introduced, do you Qt your fish before introducing them into the tank? Any problems before this one?

Stringy white poop is usually a sign of internal parasites - pretty common in wild caught fish - something that should be eventually addressed but probably not what's causing the immediate problems.

 

[sharpblade15]

and now he isnt eating anymore.

 

[sharpblade15]

sad to say... an hour after i wrote this we left and when we came back to town 2 hours later nothing was left of my little baby except a small part of his body being eaten by the fishes.

 

[PJSEA]

Cardinals are peaceful fish and probably shouldn't be in the same tank as Tangs. Could be that the Tang just harassed it too much.
I had five that died in a similar way. Next time they will be captive bred and eating well before put in a tank with other non agressive species.

 

[sharpblade15]

yeah.. the tang is a bit of a pushy girl. we went to the LFS and looked at the same tank with teh same cardinals and almost all of them also have the white parasite poop thing going on, i think it must have just been with em all. bahh at infected fish being sold.