Yellow Tang Breathing Heavily!

[ImprezaSTi]

I've had a yellow tang in my tank for about a week but I do not know if he has a disease or what. He has been breathing heavily since I got him. I have a sumpless 65g. Ammonia, nitrite, nitrate all 0. Ph 8.2. Salinity 1.026. Temp 78. All other fish and inverts are doing fine.

He has been breathing heavily since day 1, but right now hes breathing heavier than all the other days, faster than his mouth moves when hes chewing on something. I dont know how normal this is, but if a human were breathing this fast then I would consider it a deadly heart attack.

Here is a video of him I took a few days ago, not very clear but you can kind of see him breathing heavily.


No he doesn't hide in the corner like that all the time, I guess he decided to stop for the camera.

Hes also been acting kind of weird today, swimming fast then suddenly stopping and repeating that. He also acts like hes got something on his tail or body, but I dont see any white spots.

Anyone know whats wrong?

 

[kevin2000]

My 02

Rapid breathing may be a sign gill injury (ammonia burn), parasite (ich etc) or simply stress.

 

[OranguTang]

Acclimation procedure? What test kits are you using?

What about diet/eating?

 

[ImprezaSTi]

What are signs of a gill injury? What are signs of parasites?
Like I said he doesn't appear to have obvious signs of ich, other parasites I don't know.

Hes in a tank with two clowns and two chromis, should not be very stressful. For inverts I've got 6 scarlet hermits, 5 astrea snails. Thats all for livestock, no corals.

I did a half an hour float, then one and half hour drip acclimate when I got him. Im using an API test kit. I feed Formula Two Marine Pellets and Wardley Total Color Marine Flakes.

Hope this helps.

 

[JHemdal]

Was it breathing heavy BEFORE you got it?

This is just an outside shot - do you have any devices that are breaking the surface tension of the tank? Powerhead with an aerator, protein skimmer, power filter return? I once saw a yellow tang doing exactly that - kind of hyper, rapid breathing, but nothing that could be attributed to disease. It turns out the person whos tank it was had this hatred of salt spray - so the tank was covered, the powerhead air injectors were sealed off, etc. I had them drop in an airstone and in 15 minutes the fish was fine.....high CO2 issue. Dissolved oxygen was o.k., but the CO2 was building up due to lack of surface agitation.

JHemdal

p.s. - unless there is a huge difference in specific gravity (going from low to high) there is no reason you need to do a 1 1/2 hour drip acclimation on a routine purchase - and if you do, be sure to have an airstone running in the container.

 

[ImprezaSTi]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11946843#post11946843 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by JHemdal
Was it breathing heavy BEFORE you got it?

This is just an outside shot - do you have any devices that are breaking the surface tension of the tank? Powerhead with an aerator, protein skimmer, power filter return? I once saw a yellow tang doing exactly that - kind of hyper, rapid breathing, but nothing that could be attributed to disease. It turns out the person whos tank it was had this hatred of salt spray - so the tank was covered, the powerhead air injectors were sealed off, etc. I had them drop in an airstone and in 15 minutes the fish was fine.....high CO2 issue. Dissolved oxygen was o.k., but the CO2 was building up due to lack of surface agitation.

JHemdal

p.s. - unless there is a huge difference in specific gravity (going from low to high) there is no reason you need to do a 1 1/2 hour drip acclimation on a routine purchase - and if you do, be sure to have an airstone running in the container.

I am not sure whether he was breathing heavily before I got him, I only noticed it after.

I do have a powerhead near the surface and a skimmer to break surface tension, but I also have a glass top on my tank, could it be that? I will try without it for the next few days and see how things go.

Even though I do not know what the salinity of the fish store water is, I thought that my salinity was a bit high (1.026), so I decided to acclimate a bit longer. How long should it normally be for fish and inverts?

Thanks for your reply!

 

[JHemdal]

Ah well, that probably isn't it...

But just to double check: If you don't have a sump, is there any positive force moving air from the room into the air space above the tank and below the glass? A sump will allow for enough gas exchange, but if your tank doesn't have one, it might be sealed off to well.

Your'e correct, acclimate much longer when going from low to high S.G. so what you did there would be fine (just use an airstone during the drip!)

Jay

 

[spike78]

You may want to throw an airstone in the tank and see if he improves. IME Tangs seem to be really sensitive to low O2 conditions.

 

[ImprezaSTi]

The tank is about 7 ft away from the main entrance of the house which should bring a bit of circulation, but other than that, no there are no fans or anything like that to circulate air below the glass top.

 

[JHemdal]

I agree with spike78 - drop an airstone in there JUST to rule this out as the problem. Count the fish's respiration rate to get a baseline, add the airstone, wait a few hours and check the resp. rate again.

Jay

 

[ImprezaSTi]

Hmm the airstone doesnt seem to be making much of a difference.

Anyone got anymore ideas?

 

[natan]

Guill fluks may be? How about a diagnostic FW bath?

 

[odyssey1]

I dont know if this will help but here goes.

I recently got a yellow tang and he was doing the same thing. then he started to dart around and tried to scrape his side on anything he could find but I couldnt see anything. I got a cleaner shrimp the next day and he stopped breathing had a day after (about 1/3) he is still darting around from time to time but not as much. Hopefully after a few more days he will get better. I still cant see anything on him that makes him scrape him side?

Jeremy