Yellow tang turning orange

jenjen

New member
Hello RC

My yellow tang has been in my tank for nearly 6 years, and he rules my 180g. He eats like a champ and appears healthy as can be.

Over the past 2 days he has developed an orange 'flush' to him, along his top, bottom and near the tail. His behaviour remains normal, and he is eating just fine. (I feed nori, NL pellets and a frozen blend including PE mysis daily)

I have done some research and found that this is most probably due to stress, or poor water quality.

The only thing that has changed with the system in nearly 4 years is that on Jan 19th I removed my sump, sectioned it to include a 3rd chamber where I added about 2" of additional sand and one large piece of dry rock. I also redid my under tank plumbing. Everything cured 48 hours before reconnecting, and I used the same aquarium safe silicone that I've used in the past.

I have tested parameters daily since the changes, mainly watching for ammonia. Current parameters have been consistent, and have been consistent for a long LONG time previous:

ammonia = 0
nitrate = 0
dKH = 9
calc = 440
mag = 1300
sg = 1.025
temp = 79

All my other fish and inverts seem just fine, and corals (leathers/softie tank) sulked for one day but are now acting normal, though my toadstool only has partial polyp extension (but he's a grumpy grump and often does this even after regular water changes!).

I can't think of anything I should do different and am figuring to just keep things consistent and let it run it's course, but I wanted to run it by RC as well in case I'm missing something.
 
Haven't posted a pic here in ages, hopefully this works. This pic is the best I could get of him with my cell phone camera.

 
Havent detected any ammonia at all, but today I see a bit of nitrate for the first time in ages. Did a wc and now nitrate reads 20, all other params as previously posted. YT looks maybe a little better today, though that could be wishful thinking. Certainly no worse.
 
Looks like a bacterial infection if I'm not mistaken.

That would be my guess as well. I would treat with a broad spectrum antibiotic (i.e. Furan-2, Kanaplex) in QT. Only "reef safe" treatment would be to soak fish food in vitamin supplements and hope the tang's natural immune system can fight it off.
 
It kinda looks like red streaks to me. Usually caused by poor water quality or ammonia burns. I had this happen to my yellow tangs when I first got them and had them in qt. I treated with antibiotics but saw no improvement. After I moved them to my DT it went away within a few days. If its still eating, I would improve the water quality by doing a few big water changes and if no improvement then treat with antibiotics in a qt.
 
Happily my YT is back to normal, as of yesterday. The orange splotches lasted around a week.

All the reading I did kept pointing to poor water quality and/or stress, so since he was eating and behaving normally I decided to treat it as that and work on improve water quality. My tank is well established with stable param's, but I did just make some changes to my sump/fuge in the week before he reacted. I never detected any ammonia, but my nitrates did quickly rise from 0 to around 40 - they've been zero for 4+ years. I have also now gotten a small cyano outbreak. So something definitely changed in the water. All inverts, other fish, corals seem unaffected.

I have done 3 large water changes since I noticed the markings on the YT. Nitrates are now down to <5 and he is back to normal colouring. I know that Nitrate level shouldn't impact fish much, so either some Ammonia did appear and I just missed it on my tests, or maybe the quick rise in Nitrate upset him.

One more large water change this weekend should get those Nitrates back to 0.
 
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