Introduction of Fish = Tang Hiding Not Eating

[SteadyReefin]

I usually quarantine yeah you know where this is going. So I have had a Pacific Blue Tang for years in my tank. My dealer had green reef chromis overnighted from one of his distributors. Since the introduction of the fish the Pacfic BLue comes out for a minute then wedges itself into a hiding rock. Mostly she is hiding. One of the chromis my wife said might have something on it's side but she cannot tell because it is not sitting still. I examined the Tang and there is nothing noticeable on the fish. No blemishes or heavy breathing. The fish were introduced a week ago. All other fish in the tank are eating and are fine which there is a max size powder blue tang, 2 max size clowns, cleaner wrasse, solarius wrasse, 3 existing blue chromis. If you were to bet on this would you think there is a pathogen that was introduced? I tend to think so but I have no proof other than behavior. FYI once fish are in the reef I have had no luck trapping etc. I have had to tear tanks down to get to fish. I cannot do this any longer so they either live or die in that tank at this point and it pains me to state that.

 

[peasofme]

could be disease, could be stress of new additions

 

[Dmorty217]

If its disease I would look for it to hit the PBT first, not the Atlantic. Seems weird that a chromis would cause a established tang to hide. Has it done this for a wk now?

 

[CedzAquAddictio]

If its disease I would look for it to hit the PBT first, not the Atlantic. Seems weird that a chromis would cause a established tang to hide. Has it done this for a wk now?

Agreed. If anything, it seems that the established tang would harass the new chromis into hiding.

 

[Rea17]

To be fair, it's a Pacific blue not Atlantic - hippos are much more disease susceptible.

Why risk all of that for some chromis? I would agree that a pathogen was likely introduced, but there's no way to know for sure until you see symptoms. If you ordered a group of chromis and they are hanging out in the open, they could just be upsetting the tang. How many did you get?

 

[Dmorty217]

To be fair, it's a Pacific blue not Atlantic - hippos are much more disease susceptible.

Why risk all of that for some chromis? I would agree that a pathogen was likely introduced, but there's no way to know for sure until you see symptoms. If you ordered a group of chromis and they are hanging out in the open, they could just be upsetting the tang. How many did you get?

Yes thank you Ami for clearing that up since I clearly read that wrong. Disease brought In by the 5$ chromis is definitely the issue at hand, for your sake I hope you can treat it without tearing down your tank