Kole Tang bruised during tank transfer

jedimaster1138

New member
I'm upgrading tanks and moved all my fish last weekend to a temporary tank while I get the new one up. (same spot upgrade) The hardest to catch and move was my 4" Kole Tang. She's a sweet fish, but FAST, even more so than my firefish.

Anyway, so she's in a holding tank now with rock, some corals and other fish. Everyone seems OK except she's not completely happy judging by how much she's hiding. She does come out to eat, but hides a lof of the rest of the time. I have no aggressive fish whatsoever except for a couple chromis that have an attitude, but she outweighs them 4-1 and takes no guff.

What's worse though is she has a bruise on her forehead. It looked like it was getting better then this morning I noticed that she has new bruises on both her sides, nowhere near her forehead bruise. Unless she got into a fight (unlikely), got into a fight with some rock (slightly more likely) or developed a bacterial infection from the original bruise...

I had been putting in a few drops of Seachem Stressguard every day but then slowed that down to a stop. Now I'm seeing these bruises...

Melafix has been suggested...would that be more effective than Stressguard? And is it safe with my corals and LR?

Whatever I do...moving her out of the tank she's in now, until it's the final big tank, is probably not going to happen. I'd have to completely remove everything from that tank (it's a 3 footer) and then catch her...again...which as I said, is borderline impossible and will probably triple her stress which is i guess, already too high.
 
If its areas that appear to be grey and as if the skin was scraped off then I'd just leave her be. Its very common in these fish. Melafix is nothing more than tea extract with no real proof it works. I highly recommend not using it. A photo of your fish would help greatly.
 
Found her dead this morning.

When I got home last night from work her bruising had already healed a lot and she ate quite well, though now that I think about it, she was still a bit skittish. Before bed I gave them some more stress guard just to be safe.

This morning she was on the bottom, belly up, literally.

SIGH. Definitely my favorite fish.
 
thats a very fast death for a fish that is eating well. I lost an angel with similar patches that I lost. Same thing, eating well then a spot and two then next day dead. But mine got the spots after several days of scratching on rocks which I attributed to a sympton of ich. I think that the spots, or blotches or patches or whatever was some sort of bacterial infection. I since treated the rest of the fish for ich ttm, and used maracyn plus at the same time. By the time I was able to break down the tank I had a yellow wrasse that seemed to get the same sort of infection and died fast as well. All the other fish lived though so either the bacterial infection didn't spread, or the maracyn worked, or it was something else, or just coincidence. who knows?
 
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