Tangs and Ich or Velvet

[bderos]

Hi Gang - Why is it everytime I put a tang in my tank, powder brown, powder blue, yellow eyed, yellow, or tomini tang (the tomini is the newest to get sick and will probably die) they get ich or velvet and DIE? I've use Kick Ich but it doesn't help. HELP!!!

Will someone tell me if they have had the same expereince and how they fixed the problem or if I'm doing something wrong. The water is balanced, my tank has been around for 5 years, although my protien skimmer sucks.

 

[bureau13]

The short answer is because you have the ich parasite in your tank and tangs are generally susceptible to it. You have other fish in your tank which are fine I assume?

You need to take them all out and let the tank sit fishless for about 6-8 weeks. Forget about Kick Ich or any of that stuff. There are a couple stickies at the top of this forum, go read the ones about ich. The parasite has a lifecycle that requires a fish host for its continued survival. Apparently your other fish have it enough to keep it going without showing symptoms.

Oh yeah...if you remove your current fish you'll need to treat them in the quarantine tank, with some kind of copper-based med like Cupramine, or with hyposalinity. Otherwise, your fish will likely bring the parasite into the QT and possibly back into the display when you're done.

jds