kole tang, seizure????

Capt_Cully

New member
my kole was doing great one minute, next minute found him twitching on the bottom and soon he died, despite resucitation attempts.

only thing i can think of is that an anemone stung him???

any ideas what else could have caused this?

i've got a small sebae and a med bubble tip, didn't think they were strong enough or aggressive. Help appreciated.
 
Tangs will do this from time to time. I dont have a scientific explanation, but it appears to be a stress induced seizure.
I used to work at a huge wholesale/retail LFS that had over a million gallons of saltwater, and we would see this on a semi regular basis.
What I found to have some chance at bringing them back is "walking" them through the tank.
Gently grasp the fish on either side of the body, and move is slowly and steadily through the water in a forward (the fishes forward) direction. The idea is to keep water moving past the gills and continue providing O2 for it to survive.

You shouldnt have to do it long, a couple of minutes at the max. If you're not getting a positive repsonse at that point, the fish most likely isnt going to make it. A positive response is heavy breathing on its own and voluntary movement of the fish, it should begin to breath heavily and swim cautiously. I've found that if caught early enough you can save a fair amount of the fish stroking out. Just be careful not to stress them out again or you'll see the fish go through the process again.

Nick
 
If an anemone stung him you should see some marks on the side of the body from the sting. Also if you have any snails in the tank this could be the cause of the problem as some snails do have poision and the tang could have gone near him and got stung.

Most likely it's from stress, either from another fish or water quailty. I would check your water and see if it's ok. In a healty tank, with all water paramators in line, you shouldn't have tang just stressing out and dieing all of a sudden, specially if you have had the tang for awhile.
 
water param's are all where they have been. this was an acute thing, fish was great moments earlier.

i did try to revive him. grabes his tail and moved him back and forth. he would just twitch occaisionally. unfortunately he didn't make it. tried moving him to QT as last ditch effort, but.....

I've lost fish before, but this one is a real bummer. loved that fish.
couldn't even bare to replace him at the store. going with a purple. he's still at the store. wanna make sure it's very healthy for the healthy price he costs.
 
wow, you posted replies in another forum from losing fish and tried to blame it on your bubble coral you need to check things out try posting your water parameters,temp, salinity how often do you do water changes?
 
yeah it was a rough week. temp 75-77 dep on time of day w/ halides. SG 1.025, Ca 440, pH 8.2. They've all been stable. right where i usually have them. No major changes. I do a 5 to 10% water change EVERY WEEK. since the system is under a year old, i want to keep it pretty clean with various algae outbreaks that new systems encounter.

as for TRYING to blame my bubble coral for my scooter blenny's disappearance....i know what i saw. you can go back to that thread to catch up on it.
 
The temp not bad for fish though it could be a little low for corals.

Healthy fish don't just die all of a sudden for no reason and when you have more then one fish die then it's time to look at your system and figure out what wrong. It could be that some thing isn't right in your tank, the fish that your getting are heathly to begin with or some thing in your tank is killing them. I wouldn't add any new fish until you figure out what wrong.
 
A year ago I had a B.T. I lost 2 Dot Dash Butterflies to it. When they had been stung they tried to wedge themselves under a rock to stabilise. I also lost a Six Line Wrasse and a big Bangaii to the B.T. A. I took it out, and my 2 Clarkiis had to find another hangout, which turned out to be a Finger Coral I got for them.
 
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