Orange shoulder tang gone blind

[Mortie31]

Hello
i hope someone can give me some advice and hope, I've had my orange shoulder tang for 4 years, he has always been very active and healthy, a few weeks he started to change from a juvenile to adult, and went very reclusive,hiding in the rockwork mainly, he was picked on a bit by my purple and yellow tangs during this time but never before. He eventually started to come out more, but was always on the sandbed swimming very slowly and bumping into things, he hasn't come up for food for a few weeks now, he seems to me to have gone blind, there is know sign of injury or opaqueness in his eyes, Popeye or anything, his eyes look bright and perfectly normal, everything else in the tank is perfectly healthy. I'm at a loss as to what to do, in the last few days I've managed to feed him a little paste and nori with tongues, but he doesn't seem to react to the smell at all. I'm wondering if it could be some sort of neurological disease or a genetic issue when reaching adulthood, any Ideas anyone? I don't want to watch him starve to death. I have no facilities to quaranteen.

 

[Dmorty217]

If he is in fact blind force feeding will be your only solution, but this will have to be done for the duration of the tangs life if he is in fact blind. I had a one spot foxface that went blind for no apparent reason and lived for 4 months without any food. It was sad to watch the fish in that state but I also didn't want to euthanize him

 

[Realposition]

I had a harlequin tusk I had for about 3 years that suddenly went blind. He would try to eat but would miss the food half the time till eventually he couldn't catch anything at all. I put him in qt and tried everything I could think of but nothing worked at all. It really sucked watching him waste away. I eventually euthanized him.

 

[ginpang]

If you google nutritional deficiency leading to blindness in fish you're likely to find articles who suggest a lack of vitamin A and vitamin B2 can have adverse effect on eye function.

Good luck

 

[Mortie31]

If you google nutritional deficiency leading to blindness in fish you're likely to find articles who suggest a lack of vitamin A and vitamin B2 can have adverse effect on eye function.

Good luck

Thank you for the idea, just had a read, and it appears that this can be induced by feeding very abnormal diets under laboratory conditions, but most acticles conclude it seems it is highly unlikely given a relatively balanced diet in an aquarium, and I couldn't find any articles indicating if this was the reason whether or not it's reversible, I'm feeding a daily mixture of pellets, nori and mysis shrimp so nothing unusual.

 

[Mortie31]

The only thing I'm aware of changing in my tank is I've been reducing my phosphate from 0.3 currently it's down to 0.06, this has been over a 2 month period, but I think I had had sustained high phosphate levels for over a year due to a faulty test kit, I cannot think of any reason this might cause this, but I'm clutching at straws and everything revolves around effects being reversible anyway.